The Poverty Of Philosophy

THE POVERTY

OF

PHILOSOPHY

FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This translation of Karl Marx’s The Pov-
erty of Philosophy has been made from
the French edition of 1847. It takes into
account the changes and corrections intro-
duced by Marx into the copy presented
to N. Utina in 1876, and also the correc-
tions made by Frederick Engels for the
second French edition and the Germian
editions of 1885 and 1892

CONTENTS

Page

PREFACE TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION. By Frederick

Engels 7

PREFACE TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION. By
Frederick Engels 25

KARL MARX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY
Answer to the ‘'Philosophy of Poverty''
by M. Proudhon

Fo reword 29

Chapter 1. A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 31

§ 1. The Antithesis of Use Value and Exchange Value . 31

§ 2. Constituted Value or Synthetic Value 43

§ 3. Application of the Law of the Proportionality of Value 79

A) Money . 79

B) Surplus Labour 90

Chapter IL THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECON-
OMY 103

§ 1. The Method . . 103

First Observation . . 104

Second Observation . . 109

Third Observation . 110

Fourth Observation . . . . . . . Ill

Fifth Observation ... ^ . 113

Sixth Observation 115

Seventh and Last Observation 120

§ 2. Division of Labour and Machinery 126

§ 3. Competition and Monopoly . . ' 145

§ 4. Property or Ground Rent 154

§ 5. Strikes and Combinations of Workers 166

G

APPENDICES

Marx to P. V. Annenikov 179

Marx to J. B. Schweitzer ... 194

From Marx’s Work: A Contribution to the Critique of Political

Economy 203

On the Question of Free Trade Public Speech Delivered by
Karl Marx before the Democratic Association of Brussels,
January 9, 1848 ... , . . . 207

EDITORIAL NOTES . . . . .225

NAME INDEX . 231

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

To the First German Edition

The present work was produced in the winter of 1846-
47, at a time when Marx had cleared up for himself the
basic features of his new historical and economic out-
look. Proudhon’s Sysieme des Contradictions economi-
ques ou Philosophie de la Misere, which had just ap-
peared, gave him the opportunity to develop these basic
features in opposing them to the views of a man who,
from then on, was to occupy the chief place among liv-
ing French Socialists. From the time when the two of
them in Paris often spent whole nights in discussing
economic questions, their paths had more and more di-
verged; Proudhon’s book proved that there was already
an unbridgeable gulf between them. To ignore it was at
that time impossible, and so Marx by this answer of his
put on record the irreparable rupture.

Marx’s general opinion of Proudhon is to be found in
the article,! given as appendix to this preface, which ap-
peared in the Berlin Sozialdemokrat, Nos. 16, 17 and 18,
in 1865. It was the only article that Marx wrote for that
paper; Herr von Schweitzer’s attempts, which soon after-
wards became evident, to guide it along feudal and gov-
ernment lines compelled us to announce publicly the end
of our collaboration after only a few weeks.

For Germany the present work has at this precise
moment a significance which Marx himself never fore-
saw. How could he have known that, in trouncing Prou-
dhon, he was hitting Rodbertus, the idol of the place
hunters of today, whose very name was then unknown
to him?

s

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

This is not the place to deal with the relation of Marx
to Rodbertus; an opportunity for that is sure to occur to
me very soon. Here it is sufficient to note that when Rod-
bertus accuses Marx of having “plundered” him and of
having “freely used in his Capital without quoting him”
his work Zur Erkenntnis, etc., he permits himself a slan-
der which is only explicable by the spleen of misunder-
stood genius and by his remarkable ignorance of things
taking place outside Prussia, and especially of social-
ist and economic literature. Neither these charges, nor
the above-mentioned work of Rodbertus ever came to
Marx’s sight; all he knew of Rodbertus was the three
Soziale Briefe {Social Letters) and even these certainly
not before 1858 or 1859.

There is more basis for Rodbertus’ assertion in these
letters that be had already discovered “Proudhon’s con-
stituted value” before Proudhon; but here again it is true
he erroneously flatters himself with being the first dis-
coverer. In any case, he is for this reason covered by the
criticism in the present work, and this compels me to
deal briefly with his “fundamental” small work: Zur Er-
kenntnis unsrer staatswirtschaftlichen Zustande (Con-
tribution to the Knowledge of our National Economijc
Conditions) , 1842, in so far as this brings forward an-
ticipations of Proudhon as well as the communism of
Weitling also (and again unconsciously) contained in it.

In so far as modern socialism, no matter of what tend-
ency, starts out from bourgeois political economy, it al-
most exclusively links itself to the Ricardian theory of
value. The two propositions which Ricardo proclaimed in
1817 right at the beginning of his Principles, 1) that
the value of any commodity is purely and solely deter-
mined by the quantity of labour required for its produc-
tion, and 2) that the product of the entire social labour
is divided among the three classes: landowners (rent),
capitalists (profit) and workers (wages), had ever
since 1821 been utilized in England for socialist conclu-

TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION

9

sions, and in part with such sharpness and decisiveness
that this literature, which has now almost disappeared,
and v/hich to a large extent was first rediscovered by
Marx, remained unsurpassed until the appearance of
Capital. I will deal with this another time. If, therefore,
in 1842, Rodbertus for his part drew socialist conclu-
sions from the above propositions, that was certainly a
very considerable step forward for a German at that
time, but it was only for Germany that it could rank as
a new discovery. That such an application of the Ricar-
dian theory was far from new was proved by Marx
against Proudhon who suffered from a similar conceit.

“Anyone who is in any way familiar with the trend of
political economy in England cannot fail to know that
almost all the Socialists in this country have, at different
periods, proposed the equalitarian application of the Ri-
cardian theory. We could quote for M. Proudhon: Hodg-
skin. Political Economy, 1827; William Thompson, An
Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth
Most Conducive to Human Happiness, 1824; T. R. Ed-
monds, Practical Moral and Political Economy, 1828,
etc., etc., and four pages more of etc. We shall content
ourselves with listening to an English Communist, Mr.
Bray ... in his remarkable work. Labour’s Wrongs and
Labour’s Remedy, Leeds 1839.®

And the quotations given here from Bray alone put an
end to a good part of the claim to priority made by Rod-
bertus.

At that time Marx had never yet been in the reading
room of the British Museum. Besides the libraries of
Paris and Brussels, besides my books and extracts seen
during a six weeks’ journey in England we made togeth-
er in the summer of 1845, he had only examined such
books as were obtainable in Manchester. The literature
in question was, therefore, in the forties by no means so
inaccessible as it may be now. If, all the same, it always
remained unknown to Rodbertus, that is to be ascribed

10

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

solely to his Prussian local narrowness. He is the real
founder of specifically Prussian socialism and is now at
last recognized as such.

However, even in his beloved Prussia, Rodbertus was
not to remain undisturbed. In 1859, Marx’s Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy, Part I, was pub-
lished in Berlin. Therein, among the objections of the
economists against Ricardo, was put forward as the sec-
ond objection, p. 40;

“If the exchange value of a product is equal to the la-
bour time which it contains, the exchange value of a la-
bour day is equal to its product. Or the wage must be
equal to the product of labour. But the contrary is the
case.”

On this there was the following note:

“This objection brought forward against Ricardo from
the economic side was later taken up from the socialist
side. The theoretical correctness of the formula being
presupposed, practice was blamed for contradiction with
theory and bourgeois society was invited to draw in
practice the supposed conclusions from its theoretical
principle, dn this way at least, English Socialists turned
the Ricardian formula of exchange value against po-
litical economy.”

In the same note there was a reference to Marx’s Pov-
erty of Philosophy, which was then obtainable in all
the bookshops.

Rodbertus, therefore, had sufficient opportunity of
convincing himself whether his discoveries of 1842 were
really new. Instead, be proclaims them again and again
and regards them as so incomparable that it never
comes into his head that Marx might have been able
independently to draw his conclusions from Ricardo,
just as well as Rodbertus himself. That was absolutely
impossible! Marx had “plundered” him — him, whom the
same Marx had offered every facility for convincing
himself how long before both of them these conclusions.

TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION

li

at least in the crude form which they still have in the
case of Rodbertus, had been enunciated in England!

The simplest socialist application of the Ri'cardian
theory is indeed that given above. It has led in many
cases to insight into the origin and nature of surplus
value which goes far beyond Ricardo, as in the case of
Rodbertus among others. Apart from the fact that in
this respect he nowhere presents anything which had
not already been said before at least as well, his pres-
entation suffers like those of his predecessors from the
fact that he adopts, uncritically and without the least
examination, the economic categories of labour, capital,
value, etc., in the crude form, which clung to their ex-
ternal appearances, and in which they were handed
down to him by the economists. He thereby not only
cuts himself off from all further development — in con-
trast to Marx, who was the first to make something
of these propositions so often repeated for the last
sixty-four years — but, as will be shown, be opens for
himself the road leading straight to utopia.

The above application of the Ricardian theory, that
the entire social product belongs to the workers as
their product, because they are the sole real producers,
leads directly to communism. But, as Marx indicates
too in the above-quoted passage, formally it is eco-
nomically incorrect, for it is simply an application of
morality to economics. .According to the laws of bour-
geois economics, the greatest part of the product does
not belong to the workers who have produced it. If
we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so,
then that has nothing immediately to do with econom-
ics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is
in contradiction to our sense of morality. Marx, there-
fore, never based his communist demands upon this,
but upon the inevitable collapse of the capitalist mode
of production which is daily taking place before our
eyes to an ever greater degree; he says only that sur-

12

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

plus value consists of unpaid labour, which is a simple
fact. But what formally may be economically incor-
rect, may all the same be correct from the point of
view of world history. If the moral consciousness of
the mass declares an economic fact to be unjust, as
it has done in the case of slavery or serf labour, that
is a proof that the fact itself has been outlived, that
other economic facts have made their appearance, ow-
ing to which the former has become unbearable and
untenable. Therefore, a very true economic content may
be concealed behind the formal economic incorrectness.
This is not the place to deal more closely with the sig-
nificance and history of the theory of surplus value.

At the same time other conclusions can be drawn,
and have been drawn, from the Ricardian theory of
value. The value of commodities is determined by the
labour required for their production. It is found, how-
ever, that in this bad world commodities are sold
sometimes above, sometimes below their value, and in-
deed not only as a result of variations in competition.
The rate of profit has just as much the tendency to
become equalized at the same level for all capitalists
as the price of commodities has to become reduced to
the labour value by the agency of supply and demand.
But the rate of profit is calculated on the total capital
invested in an industrial enterprise. Since now the an-
nual product in two different branches of industry may
incorporate equal quantities of labour, and, conse-
quently, may represent equal values, and also wages
may be equally high in both, while yet the capital in-
vested in one branch may, and often is, twice or three
times as great as in the other, consequently the Ri-
cardian law of value, as Ricardo himself discovered,
comes here into contradiction with the law of the equal
rate of profit. If the products of both branches of in-
dustry are sold at their values, the rates of profit can-
not be equal; if, however, the rates of profit are equal.

TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION

13

then the products of both branches of industry certainly
cannot always be sold at their values. Thus, we have
here a contradiction, an antinomy of two economic
laws, the practical solution of which takes place ac-
cording to Ricardo (Chapter I, Sections 4 and 5) as
a rule in favour of the rate of profit at the cost of
value.

But the Ricardian definition of value, in spite of its
ominous characteristics, has a feature which makes it
dear to the heart of the good bourgeois. It appeals
with irresistible force to his sense of justice. Justice
and equality of rights are the basic pillars on which
the bourgeois of the eighteenth and nineteenth centu-
ries would like to erect his social edifice over the ruins
of feudal injustice, inequality and privilege. And the
determination of the value of commodities by labour
and the free exchange of the products of labour, taking
place according to this measure of value between com-
modity owners with equal rights, these are, as Marx
has already proved, the real bases on which the whole
political, juridical and philosophical ideology of the
modern bourgeoisie has been built. Once it is rec-
ognized that labour is the measure of value of a com-
modity, the better feelings of the good bourgeois can-
not but be deeply wounded by the wickedness of a
world which, while recognizing this basic law of jus-
tice in name, still in fact appears at every moment to
set it aside without compunction. And the petty bour-
geois especially, whose honest labour — even if it is
only that of his workmen and apprentices — is daily
more and more depreciated in value by the competition
of large-scale production and machinery, this petty
producer especially must long for a society in which
the exchange of products according to their labour
value is at last a complete and invariable truth. In
other words, he is bound to long for a society in which
a single law of commodity production prevails exclu-

14

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

sively and in full, but where the conditions are abol-
ished in which it can prevail at all, viz., the other laws
of commodity production and, later, of capitalist pro-
duction.

How deeply this utopia has struck roots in the mode
of thought of the modern petty bourgeois — real or ideal
— is proved by the fact that it was already systemati-
cally developed by John Gray in 1831, that it was tried
in practice and theoretically widely preached in Eng-
land in the thirties, that it was proclaimed as the latest
truth by Rodbertus in Germany in 1842 and by Prou-
dhon in France in 1846, that it was again proclaimed by
Rodbertus even in 1871 as the solution of the social
question and as, so to say, his social testament, and
that in 1884 again it finds adherents among the horde
of place hunters who in the name of Rodbertus set
themselves to exploit Prussian state socialism.

The criticism of this utopia has been so exhaustively
furnished by Marx both against Proudhon and against
Gray (see the appendix to this work), that I can limit
myself here to a few remarks on the form of proving
and depicting it peculiar to Rodbertus.

As already said, Rodbertus adopts the traditional
definitions of economic concepts entirely in the form in
which they have come to him from the economists. He
does not make the slightest attempt to investigate
them. Value is for him “the valuation of one thing
against others according to quantity, this valuation
being conceived as measure.” This, to put it mildly,
extremely slovenly definition gives us at the best an
idea of what value approximately looks like, but says
absolutely nothing of what it is. Since this, however,
is all that Rodbertus is able to tell us about value, it
is comprehensible that he looks for a measure of value
lying outside value. After thirty pages in which be
mixes up use value and exchange value in higgledy-
piggledy fashion with that power of abstract thought

TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION

15

SO infinitely admired by Herr Adolf Wagner, he arrives
at the result that there is no real measure of value and
that one has to make shift with a substitute measure.
Labour can serve as such, but only if products of an
equal quantity of labour are always exchanged against
products of an equal quantity of labour; whether this
“is already the case of itself, or whether measures are
adopted” to ensure that it is. Consequently, value and
labour remain without any sort of actual relation to
each other, in spite of the fact that the whole first
chapter is taken up to expound to us that commodities
“cost labour” and nothing but labour, and why this
is so.

Labour, again, is taken without examination in the
form in which it occurs among the economists. And not
even that. For, although there is a reference in a couple
of words to dilTerences in intensity of labour, labour is
still put forward quite generally as something which
“costs,” hence as something which measures value,
quite irrespective of whether it is expended under
normal average social conditions or not. Whether the
producers use ten days, or only one, for the preparation
of products which could be prepared in one day; wheth-
er they employ the best or the worst tools; whether
they expend their labour time in the production of so-
cially necessary articles and in the socially required
quantity, or whether they make quite undesired articles
or desired articles in quantities above or below the
demand — about all this, there is not a word: labour is
labour, the product of equal labour must be exchanged
against the product of equal labour. Rodbertus, who is
otherwise always ready, whether rightly or not, to
adopt the national standpoint and to survey the rela-
tions of individual producers from the high watehtower
of general social considerations, carefully avoids doing
so here. And this, indeed, solely because from the very
first line of his book he makes directly for the utopia

Its

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGEES

of labour money and because any investigation of h
hour in its property of producing value would I
bound to put insuperable obstacles in his wa^
His instinct was here considerably stronger than hi
power of abstract thought, which, by the by, is re
vealed in Rodbertus by the most concrete absence c
ideas.

The transition to utopia is now made in a hand’
turn. The “measures,” which ensure exchange of com
modities according to labour value as the invariabl
rule, do not cause any difficulty. The other Utopians c
this tendency, from Gray to Proudhon, rack their brain
to invent social institutions which would achieve thi
aim. They attempt at least to solve the economic ques
lion in an economic way through the action of the pos
sessors themselves who own the commodities to be ex
changed. For Rodbertus it is much easier. As a goo(
Prussian he appeals to the state: a decree of the stat(
power orders the reform.

In this way then, value is happily “constituted,” bu
not by any means the priority in this constitution whicl
is claimed by Rodbertus. On the contrary. Gray as wel
as Bray — among many others — before Rodbertus, of
ten at length and to the point of satiety, repeated thi5
idea, viz., the pious desire for measures by means oi
which products would always and under all circum-
stances be exchanged only at their labour value.

After the state has thus constituted value — at least
for a part of the products, for Rodbertus is also modest
— it issues its labour paper money, and gives advances
therefrom to the industrial capitalists, with which the
latter pay the wages of the workers, whereupon the
workers buy the products with the labour paper money
they have received, and so cause the paper money to
flow back to its starting point. How very beautifully
this proceeds, one must hear from Rodbertus him-
self:

TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION

17

“In regard to the second condition, the necessary
measure that the value certified in the note should be ac-
tually present in circulation is realized in that only the
person who actually delivers a product receives a
note, on which is accurately recorded the quantity of
labour by which the product was produced. He who de-
livers a product of two days’ labour receives a note
marked ‘two days.’ By the strict observance of this rule
in the issue of notes, the second condition too would
necessarily be fulfilled. For as in accordance with our
presuppositions the real value of the goods always co-
incides with the quantity of labour which their produc-
tion has cost and this quantity of labour is measurable
by the usual division of time, and therefore everyone
who hands in a product on which two days’ labour has
been expended and receives a certificate for two days
has received, certified, or assigned to him, neither more
nor less value than that which hehas in fact supplied. Fur-
ther, since only the person who has actually put a prod-
uct into circulation receives such a certificate, it is
equally certain that the value marked on the note is
available for the satisfaction of society. However exten-
sive we imagine the circle of division of labour to be,
if this rule is strictly followed the sum total of available
value must be exactly equal to the sum total of cer-
tified value. Since, however, the total of certified value
is exactly equal to the total of value assigned, the lat-
ter must necessarily coincide with the available value,
all claims will be satisfied and the liquidation correctly
brought about.” (Pp. 166-67.)

If Rodbertus has hitherto always had the misfortune
to arrive too late with his new discoveries, this time at
least he has the merit of one sort of originality: none of
his rivals has dared to express the stupidity of the la-
bour money utopia in this childishly naive, transparent,
I might say truly Pomeranian, form. Since for every pa-
per certificate a corresponding object of value has been
2-1464

18

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

delivered, and no object of value is given out except
against a corresponding paper certificate, the sum total
of paper certificates must always be covered by the sum
total of objects of value. The calculation works out with-
out any remainder, it agrees down to a second of la-
bour time, and no Regierungs-Hauptkassen-Rentamts-
kalkulator,^ however grey in the service, could prove
the slightest error in the reckoning. What more could
one want?

In present-day capitalist society each industrial cap-
italist produces on his own account what, how and a.s
much as he likes. The social demand, however, remains
an unknown magnitude to him, both in regard to quali-
ty, the kind of objects required, and in regard to quan-
tity. That which today cannot be supplied quickly
enough, may tomorrow be offered far in excess of the de-
mand. Nevertheless, demand is finally satisfied in one
way or another, well or badly, and, taken as a whole,
production is finally directed towards the objects re-
quired. How is this reconciliation of the contradiction ef-
fected? By competition. And how does competition bring
about this solution? Simply by depreciating below their
labour value those commodities which in kind or
amount are useless for immediate social requirements,
and by making the producers feel, through this round-
about means, that they have produced either absolutely
useless articles or useful articles in unusable, super-
fluous quantity. From this, two things follow.

First, the continual deviation of the prices of commo-
dities from their values is the necessary condition in
and through which alone the value of the commodities
can come into existence. Only through the fluctuations
of competition, and consequently of commodity prices,
does the law of value of commodity production assert
itself and the determination of the value of the com-
modity by the socially necessary labour time become a
reality. That thereby the form of manifestation of val-

TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION

19

ue, the price, as a rule has a •different aspect from the
value which it manifests, is a fate which value shares
with most social relations. The king usually looks quite
different from the monarchy which he represents.
To desire, in a society of producers who exchange their
commodities, to establish the determination of value
by labour time, by forbidding competition to 'establish
this determination of value through pressure on prices
in the only way in which it can be established, is there-
fore merely to prove that, at least in this sphere, one
has adopted the usual utopian disdain of 'economic laws.

Secondly, competition, by bringing into operation the
law of value of commodity production in a society of
producers who exchange their commodities, precisely
thereby brings about the only organization and ar-
raO'gement of social production which is possible in the
circumstances. Only through the undervaluation or
overvaluation of products is it forcibly brought home
to the individual commodity producers what things and
what quantity of them society requires or does not re-
quire. But it is just this sole regulator that the utopia in
which Rodbertus also shares would abolish. And if we then
ask what guarantee we have that necessary quantity
and not more of each product will be produced, that
we shall not go hungry in regard to corn and meat
while we are choked in beet sugar and drowned in po-
tato spirit, that we shall not lack trousers to cover our
nakedness while trouser buttons flood us in millions —
Rodbertus triumphantly shows us his famous calcula-
tion, according to which the correct certificate has been
handed out for every sup'erfluous pound of sugar, for
every unsold barrel of spirit, for every unusable trou-
ser button, a calculation which “works out” exactly,
and according to which “all claims will be satisfied and
the liquidation correctly brought about.” And anyone
who does not believe this can apply to the governmen-
tal chief revenue office accountant, X, in Pomerania,
2 *

20

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

who has supervised the calculation and found it correct
and who, as one who has never yet been found guilty
of a mistake in his cash account, is thoroughly trust-
worthy.

And now consider the naivete with which Rodbertus
would abolish industrial and trade crises by means of
his utopia. As soon as the production of commodities
has assumed world market dimensions, the equalization
between the individual producers who produce for pri-
vate account and the market for which they produce,
which in respect of quantity and quality of demand is
more or less unknown to them, is established by means
of a storm in the world market, by a trade crisis. If
now competilion is to be forbidden to make the individ-
ual producers aware, by the rise or fall of prices, how
the world market stands, then their eyes are completely
blinded. To institute the production of commodities in
such a fashion that the producers cannot any more
learn anything about the state of the market for which
they are producing— that indeed is a cure for the (dis-
ease of crisis which could make Dr. Eisenbart envious of
Rodbertus.

One now comprehends why Rodbertus determines the
value of commodities simply by “labour” and at most
admits of different degrees of intensity of labour. If he
had investigated by wihat means and how labour creates
value and therefore also determines and measures
it, be would have arrived at socially necessary labour,

* At least, this was the case until recently. Since England’s
monopoly of the world market is being more and more shattered
by the participation of France, Germany and, above all, of
America in world trade, a new form of equalization appears to
be operating. ^ The period of general prosperity preceding the
crisis ^ still fails to appear. If it should fail altogether, then
chronic stagnation would necessarily become the normal con-
dition of modern industry, with only insignificant fluctuations.
[Note by F. Engels.]

TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION

21

necessary for the single product, both in relation to
other products of the same kind and also in relation to
society’s total demand. He would thereby be confront-
ed with the question how the adjustment of the pro-
duction of separate commodity producers to the total
social demand takes place, and his whole utopia would
thereby have been made impossible. This time he pre-
ferred in fact to “make an abstraction,” namely of pre-
cisely that which mattered.

Now at last we come to the point where Rodbertus
really offers us something new; something which dis-
tinguishes him from all his numerous fellow supporters
of labour money exchange economy. They all demand
this exchange organization with the aim of abolishing
the exploitation of wage labour by capital. Every pro-
ducer is to receive the full labour value of his product.
In this they all agree, from Gray to Proudhon. Not at
all, says Rodbertus. Wage labour and its exploitation
remains.

In the first place, in no conceivable state of society
can the worker receive for consumption the entire value
of his product. A series of economically unproductive
but necessary functions have to be met from the fund
produced, and consequently also the persons connected
with them maintained. This is only correct so long as
the present-day division of labour holds. In a society in
which general productive labour is obligatory, which
is, however, also “conceivable,” this falls to the ground.
But the necessity for a fund for social reserve and ac-
cumulation would remain and consequently even in that
case, while the workers as a whole, i.e., alt, would re-
main in possession and enjoyment of their total pro-
duct, each separate worker would not enjoy the “full
product of his labour.” Nor has the maintenance of eco-
nomically unproductive functions at the expense of the
labour product been overlooked by the other labour
money Utopians. But they leave the workers to tax

22

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

themselves for this purpose in the usual democratic
way, while Rodb-ertus, whose whole social reform of
1842 is adapted to the Prussian state of that time, re-
fers the whole matter to the decision of the bureaucra-
cy, which determines from labove the share of the work-
er in his own product and graciously permits him. to
have it.

In the second place, ground rent and profit are also
to continue undiminished. For the landowners and in-
dustrial capitalists also exercise certain socially useful
or even necessary functions, even if economically un-
productive ones, and they receive in the shape of
ground rent and profit a sort of pay on that account — a
conception which was admittedly not new even in 1842.
Actually they get at present far too much for the little
that they do, and do badly enough, but Rodbertus has
need, at least for the next five hundred years, of a pri-
vileged class, and so the present rate of surplus value,
to express myself correctly, is to remain in existence
but is not to be allowed to be increased. This present
rate of surplus value Rodbertus takes to be two hun-
dred per cent, that is to say, for twelve hours of labour
daily the worker is to receive a certificate not for twelve
hours but for only four, and the value produced in
the remaining eight hours is to be divided between land-
owner and capitalist. The labour certificates of Rod-
bertus, therefore, directly lie. Again, one must be a Po-
meranian Junker in order to imagine that a working
class would put up with working twelve hours in order
to receive a certificate of four hours of labour. If the
hocus-pocus of capitalist production is translated into
this naive language, in which it appears as naked rob-
bery, it is made impossible. Every certificate given to
a worker would be a direct instigation to rebellion and
would come under § 110 of the German Imperial Pen-
al Code. One must never hmre seen any other proletar-
iat than the day-labourer pioletariat, still actually in

TO THE FIHST GERMAN EDITION

semi-serfdom, of a Pomeranian Junker’s estate, where
the rod and the whip reign supreme, and where all the
good-looking women of the village belong to his lord-
ship’s harem, in order to imagine one can offer such an
insult to the w'orkers. But our conservatives are just
our greatest revolutionaries.

If, however, our workers are sufficiently docile to suf-
fer the imposition that they have in reality only worked
four hours after twelve whole hours of hard labour,
they are, as a reward, to be guaranteed that for all
eternity their share in their own product will never fall
below a third. That is indeed music of the future played
on a child’s trumpet and not worth wasting a word
over. In so far, therefore, as there is anything novel
in the labour money exchange utopia of Rodbertus, this
novelty is simply childish and far below the achieve-
ments of his numerous comrades both before and after
him.

For the time when Rodbertus’ Zur Erkennfnis, etc.,
appeared, it was certainly an important book. His de-
velopment of Ricardo’s theory of value in one direction
was a very promising beginning. Even if it was only
for him and for Germany that it was new, still as a
whole, it stands on an equal level with the achieve-
ments of the better of his English predecessors. But it
was only a beginning, from which a real gain for the-
ory could be achieved only by further thorough and crit-
ical work. But he cut himself off from further devel-
opment in this direction by also developing Ricardo’s
tteory from the very beginning in the second direction,
iri the direction of utopia. Thereby he lost the first con-
dition of all criticism — freedom from bias. He worked
on towards a goal fixed in advance, he became a Ten-
denzokonomA

Once caught in the toils of his utopia, he cut himself
off from_ all possibility of scientific advance. From 1842
up to his death, he went round in a circle, always re-

24

PREFACE BY FREDERICK ENGELS

peating the same ideas which he had already expressed
or indicated in his first work, feeling himself unappre-
ciated, finding himself plundered, where there was noth-
ing to plunder, and at last refusing, not without delib-
erate intention, to recognize that at bottom he had
only rediscovered what had already been discovered
long before.

.'is ^

In a few places the translation departs from the print-
ed French original. This is based on alterations in
Marx’s own handwriting, which will also be inserted in
the new French edition now being prepared.

It is hardly necessary to point out that the terminol-
ogy used in this work does not quite coincide with that
in Capital. Thus this work still speaks of labour as a
commodity, of the purchase and sale of labour, instead
of labour power.

In this edition there is also added as a supplement:

1) a passage from Marx’s work Zur Kritik der poli-
tischen Okonomie [A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy], Berlin 1859, dealing with the first
labour money exchange utopia of John Gray, and 2) a
translation of Marx’s speech on free trade in Brussels
(1848), which belongs to the same period of develop-
ment of the author as the Poverty.

London, October 23, 1884

Frederick Engels

PREFACE TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION

For the second edition I have only to remark that the
name wrongly written Hopkins in the French text (on
page 45s) has been replaced by the correct name Hodg-
skin and that in the same place the date of the work
of William Thompson has been corrected to 1824. It is
to be hoped that this will appease the bibliographical
conscience of Professor Anton Menger.

Frederick Engels

London, March 29, 1892

KARL MARX

THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

Answer to the Philosophy of Poverty
by M. Proudhov^

FOREWORD

M. Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly
misunderstood in Europe. In France, he has the right to
be a bad economist, because he is reputed to be a good
German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be
a bad philosopher, because he is reputed to be one of
the ablest of French economists. Being both German
'and economist at the same time, we desire to protest
against this double error.

The reader will understand that in this thankless task
we have often had to abandon our criticism of M. Prou-
dhon in order to criticize German philosophy, and at
the same time to give some observations on political
economy.

Karl Marx

Brussels, June 15, 1847

M. Proudhon’s work is not just a treatise on political
economy, an ordinary book; it is a bible. “Mysteries,”
“Secrets Wrested from the Bosom of God,” “Revela-
tions” — it lacks nothing. But as prophets are discussed
nowadays more conscientiously than profane writers,
the reader must resign himself to going with us through
the arid and gloomy erudition of “Genesis,” in or-
der to ascend later, with M. Proudhon, into the ethereal
and fertile realm of super-socialism. (See Proudhon,
Philosophy of Poverty, Prologue, p. Ill, line 20.)

CHAPTER I

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

§ 1. THE ANTITHESIS OF USE VALUE AND EXCHANGE VALUE

“The capacity of all products, whether natural or in-
dustrial, to contribute to man’s subsistence is specifical-
ly termed use value-, their capacity to be given in ex-
change for one another, exchange value. . . . How does
use value become exchange value? . . . The genesis of
the idea of (exchange) value has not been noted by eco-
nomists with sufficient care. It is necessary, therefore,
for us to dwell upon it. Since a very large number of
the things I need occur in nature only in moderate
quantities, or even not at all, I am forced to assist in the
production of what I lack. And as I cannot set my hand
to so many things, I shall propose to other men, my
collaborators in various functions, to cede to me a part
of their products in exchange for mine.” (Proudhon,
Vol. I, Chap. II.)

M. Proudhon undertakes to explain to us first of all
the double nature of value, the “distinction in value,"
the process by which use value is transformed into ex-
change value. It is necessary for us to dwell with M.
Proudhon upon this act of transubstantiation. The fol-
lowing is how this act is accomplished, according to
our author.

A very large number of products are not to be found
in nature, they are products of industry. If man’s needs
go beyond nature’s spontaneous production, he is forced

32

KABL MAKX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

to have recourse to industrial production. What is
this industry in M. Proudhon’s view? What is its orig-
in? A single individual, feeling the need for a very
great number of things, “cannot set his hand to so
many things.” So many needs to satisfy presuppose so
many things to produce — there are no products without
production. So many things to produce presuppose at
once more than one man’s hand helping to produce
them. Now', the moment you postulate more than one
hand helping in production, you at once presuppose a
whole production based on the division of labour. Thus
need, as M. Proudhon presupposes it, itself presup-
poses the whole division of labour. In presupposing the
division of labour, you get exchange, and, consequent-
ly, exchange value. One might as well have presupposed
exchange value from the very beginning.

But M. Proudhon prefers to go the roundabout way.
Let us follow him in all his detours, which always bring
him back to his starting point.

In order to emerge from the condition in which every-
one produces in isolation and to arrive at exchange, “I
turn to my collaborators in various functions,” says
M. Proudhon. I myself, then, have collaborators, all
with different functions. And yet, for all that, I and all
the others, always according to M. Proudhon’s suppo-
sition, have got no farther than the solitary and hardly
social position of the Robinsons. The collaborators and
the various functions, the division of labour and the
exchange it implies, are already to hand.

To sum up: I have certain needs which are founded
on the division of labour and on exchange. In presup-
posing these needs, M. Proudhon has thus presupposed
exchange, exchange value, the very thing of which he
purposes to “note the 'genesis with more care than oth-
er economists.”

M. Proudhon might just as well have inverted the
order of things, without in any way affecting the accu-

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

33

racy of his conclusions. To explain exchange value, we
must have exchange. To explain exchange, we must
have the division of labour. To explain the division of
labour, we must have needs which render necessary
the division of labour. To explain these needs, we
must ‘"presuppose” them, which is not to deny
them— contrary to the first axiom in M. Proudhon’s
prologue; “To presuppose God is to deny Him’’ (Pro-
logue, p. 1).

How does M. Proudhon, who assumes the division of
labour as the known, manage to explain exchange val-
ue, which for him is always the unknown?

“A man” sets out to “propose to other men, his col-
laborators in various functions,” that they establish ex-
change, and make a distinction between ordinary value
and exchange value, iln accepting this proposed dis-
tinction, the collaborators have left M. Proudhon no
other “care” than that of recording the fact, of mark-
ing, of “noting” in his treatise on political economy
“the genesis of the idea of value.” But he has still to
explain to us the “genesis” of this , proposal, to tell us
finally how this single individual, this Robinson, sud-
denly had the idea of making “to his collaborators” a
proposal of the type known and how these collabora-
tors accepted it without the slightest protest.

M. Proudhon does not enter into these genealogical
details. He merely places a sort of historical stamp
upon the fact of exchange, by presenting it in the form
of a motion, made by a third party, that exchange be
established.

That is a sample of the “historical and descriptive
method" of M. Proudhon, who professes a superb dis-
dain for the “historical and descriptive methods” of the
Adam Smiths and Ricardos.

Exchange has a history of its own. It has passed
through different phases.

3—1464

34

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

There was a time, as in the Middle Ages, when only
the superfluous, the excess of production over consump-
tion, was exchanged.

There was again a time, when not only the superflu-
ous, but all products, all industrial existence, had
passed into commerce, when the whole of production de-
pended on exchange. How are we to explain this sec-
ond phase of exchange — marketable value at its sec-
ond power?

M. Proudhon would have a reply ready-made: As-
sume that a man has “proposed to other men, his colla-
borators in various functions,” to raise marketable val-
ue to its second power.

Finally, there came a time when everything that men
had considered as inalienable became an object of ex-
change, of traffic and could be alienated. This is the
time when the very things which till then had been
communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never
sold; acquired, but never bought — virtue, love, convic-
tion, knowledge, conscienoe, etc. — when everything, in
short, passed into commerce. It is the time of general
corruption, of universal venality, or, to speak in terms
of political economy, the time when everything, moral
or physical, having become a marketable value, is
brought to the market to be assessed at its truest value.

How, again, can we explain this new and last phase
of exchange — marketable value at its third power?

M. Proudhon would have a reply ready-made: Assume
that a person has “proposed to other persons, his
collaborators in various functions,” to make a market-
able value out of virtue, love, etc., to raise exchange
value to its third and last power.

We see that M. Proudhon’s “historical and descrip-
tive method” is applicable to everything, it answers
everything, explains everything. If it is a question above
all of explaining historically “the genesis of an eco-
nomic idea,” it postulates a man who proposes to other

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

36

men, “his collaborators in various functions,” that they
perform this act of genesis and that is the end of it.

We shall hereafter accept the “genesis” of exchange
value as an accomplished act; it now remains only to
eji;pound the relation between exchange value and use
value. Let us hear what M. Proudhon has to say:

“Economists have very well brought out the double
character of value, but what they have not pointed out
with the same precision is its contradictory nature-, this
is where our criticism begins. ... It is a small thing to
have drawn attention to this surprising contrast be-
tween use value and exchange value, in which econom-
ists have been wont to see only something very
simple: we must show that this alleged simplicity con-
ceals a profound mystery into which it is our duty to
penetrate In technical terms, use value and ex-

change value stand in inverse ratio to each other.”

If we have thoroughly grasped M. Proudhon’s
thought the following are the four points which he sets
out to establish:

1. Use value and exchange value form a “surprising
contrast,” they are in opposition to each other.

2. Use value and exchange value are in inverse ratio,
in contradiction, to each other.

3. Economists have neither observed nor recognized
either the opposition or the contradiction.

4. M. Proudho.n’s criticism begins at the end.

We, too, shall begin at the end, and, in order to clear
the economists from M. Proudhon’s accusations, we
shall let two sufficiently well-known economists speak
for themselves.

Sismondi: “It is the opposition between use value and
exchange value to which commerce has reduced every-
thing, etc. {Etudes, Volume 11, p. 162, Brussels edi-
tion.) ' ; : i ! I '

Lauderdale: “In proportion as the riches of individu-
als are increased by an augmentation of the value of

3* '

36

KARL MARX, THS POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

any commodity, the wealth of the society is generally
diminished; and in proportion as the mass of individual
riches is diminished, by the diminution of the value of
any commodity, its opulence is generally increased.”
(Recherches sur la nature et I’origine de la richesse pub-
lique; translated by Langentie de Lavaisse. Paris,
1808 [p. 33] 7)

Sismondi founded on the opposition between use val-
ue and exchange value his principial idoctrine, accord-
ing to which diminution in revenue is proportional to
the increase in production.

Lauderdale founded his system on the inverse ratio
of the two kinds of value, and his doctrine was indeed
so popular in Ricardo’s time that the latter could speak
of it as of something generally known. “It is through
confounding the ideas of value and wealth, or riches
that it has been asserted, that by diminishing the
quantity of commodities, that is to say, of the necessaries,
conveniences, and enjoyments of human life, riches may
be increased.” (Ricardo, Principes de I’economie poli-
tique, translated by Constancio, annotations by J. B.
Say. Paris 1835; Volume II, chapter Sur la valeur et
les richesses.s)

We have just seen that the economists before M. Prou-
dhon had “drawn attention” to the profound mystery
of opposition and contradiction. Let us now see how
M. Proudhon in his turn explains this mystery after the
economists.

The exchange value of a product falls as the supply
increases, the demand remaining the same; in other
words, the more abundant a product is relatively to the
demand, the lower is its exchange value, or price. Vice
versa: The weaker the supply relatively to the demand,
the higher rises the exchange value of the price of the
product supplied: in other words, the greater the scar-
city in the products supplied, relatively to ihe demand,
the higher the prices. The exchange value of a product

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

37

depends upon its abundance or its scarcity, but always
in relation to the demand. Take a product that is more
than scarce, unique of its kind if you will: this unique
product will be more than abundant, it will be super-
fluous, if there is no demand for it. On the other hand,
take a product multiplied into millions, it will always
be scarce if it does not satisfy the demand, that is, if
there is too great a demand for it.

These are what we should almost call truisms, yet
we have had to repeat them here in order to render
M. Proudhon’s mysteries comprehensible.

“So that, following up the principle to its ultimate
consequences, one would come to the conclusion, the
most logical in the world, that the things whose use is
indispensable and whose quantity is unlimited should
be had for nothing, and those whose utility is nil and
whose scarcity is extreme should be of incalculable
worth. To cap the difficulty, these extremes are impos-
sible in practice: on the one hand, no human product
could ever be unlimited in magnitude; on the other, even
the scarcest things must perforce be useful to a certain
degree, otherwise they would be quite valueless. Use
value and exchange value are thus inexorably bound up
with each other, although by their nature they contin-
ually tend to be mutually exclusive.” (Volume I, p. 39.)

What caps M. Proudhon’s difficulty? That he has
simply forgotten about demand, and that a thing can be
scarce or abundant only in so far as it is in demand.
The moment he leaves out demand, he identifies ex-
change value with scarcity and use value with abund-
ance. In reality, in saying that things “whose utility is
nit and scarcity extreme are of incalculable worth," he
is simply declaring that exchange value is merely scar-
city. “Scarcity extreme and utility nil” means pure scar-
city. “Incalculable worth” is the maximum of exchange
value, it is pure exchange value. He equates these two
terms. Therefore exchange value and scarcity are equi-

38

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

valent terms. In arriving at these alleged “extreme con-
sequences,” M. Proudhon has in fact carried to the ex-
treme, not the things, but the terms which express
them, and, in so doing, he shows proficiency in rhetoric
rather than in logic. He merely rediscovers his first
hypotheses in all their nakedness, when he thinks he has
discovered new consequences. Thanks to the same pro-
cedure he succeeds in identifying use value with pure
abundance.

After having equated exchange value and scarcity,
use value and abundance, M. Proudhon is quite aston-
ished not to find use value in scarcity and exchange
value, nor exchange value in abundance and use value;
and seeing that these extremes are impossible in prac-
tice, he can do nothing but believe in mystery. Incal-
culable worth exists for him, because buyers do not ex-
ist, and he will never find any buyers, so long as he
leaves out demand.

On the other hand, M. Proudhon’s abundance seems to
be something spontaneous. He completely forgets that
there are people who produce it, and that it is to their
interest never to lose sight of demand. Otherwise, how
could M. Proudhon have said that things which are very
useful must have a very low price, or even cost nothing?
On the contrary, he should have concluded that abun-
dance, the production of very useful things, should be
restricted if their price, their exchange value, is to be
raised.

The old vine-growers of France in petitioning for a
law to forbid the planting of new vines; the Dutch in
burning Asiatic spices, in uprooting clove trees in the
Moluccas, were simply trying to reduce abundance in
order to raise exchange value. During the whole of the
Middle Ages this same principle was acted upon, in
limiting by laws the number of journeymen a single
master could employ and the number of implements he
could use. (See Anderson, History of Commerce.^)

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

39

After having represented abundance as use value and
scarcity as exchange value — nothing indeed is easier
than to prove that abundance and scarcity are in in-
verse ratio — M. Proudhon identifies use value with sup-
ply and exchange value with demand. To make the anti-
thesis even more clear-cut, he substitutes a new term,
putting "‘estimation value” instead of exchange value.
The battle has now shifted its ground, and we have on
one side utility (use value, supply), on the other, es-
timation (exchange value, demand).

Who is to reconcile these two contradictory forces?
What is to be done to bring them into harmony with
each other? Is it possible to find in them even a single
point of comparison?

“Certainly,” cries M. Proudhon, “there is one — free
will. The price resulting from this battle between supply
and demand, between utility and estimation will not be
the expression of eternal justice.”

M. Proudhon goes on to develop this antithesis.

“In my capacity as a free buyer, I am judge of my
needs, judge of the desirability of an object, judge of the
price I am willing to pay for it. On the other hand, in
your capacity as a free producer, you are master of the
means of execution, and in consequence, you have the
power to reduce your expenses.” (Volume I, p. 41.)

And as demand, or exchange value, is identical with
estimation, M. Proudhon is led to say:

“It is proved that it is man’s free will that gives rise
to the opposition between use value and exchange value.
How can this opposition be removed, so long as free will
exists? And how can the latter be sacrificed without
sacrificing mankind?” (Volume I, p. 41.)

Thus there is no possible way out. There is a struggle
between two as it were incommensurable powers, be-
tween utility and estimation, between the free buyer and
the free producer.

Let us look at things a little more closely.

40

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

Supply does not represent exclusively utility, demand
does not represent exclusively estimation. Does not the
demander also supply a certain product or the token
representing all products, viz., money; and as supplier,
does he not represent, according to M. Proudhon, utility
or use value?

Again, does not the supplier also demand a certain
product or the token representing all products, viz.,
money? And does he not thus become the representative
of estimation, of estimation value or of exchange value?

Demand is at the same time a supply, supply is at the
same time a demand. Thus M. Proudhon’s antithesis, in
simply identifying supply and demand, the one with
utility, the other with estimation, is based only on a
futile abstraction.

What M. Proudhon calls use value is called estima-
tion value by other economists, and with just as much
right. We shall quote only Storch (Cours d’economie po-
litique, Paris 1823, pp. 48 and 49).'°

According to him, needs are the things for which we
feel the need; values are things to which we attribute
value. Most things have value only because they satisfy
needs engendered by estimation. The estimation of our
needs may change; therefore the utility of things, which
expresses only the relation of these things to our needs,
may also change. Natural needs themselves are contin-
ually changing. Indeed, what could be more varied than
the objects which form the staple food of different peoples!

The conflict does not take place between utility and
estimation; it takes place between the marketable value
demanded by the supplier and the marketable value
supplied by the demander. The exchange value of the
product is each time the resultant of these contradictory
appreciations.

In final analysis, supply and demand bring together
production and consumption, but production and con-
sumption based on individual exchanges.

A SClENTmC DISCOVEEY

41

The product supplied is not useful in itself. It is the
consumer who determines its utility. And even when its
quality of being useful is admitted, it does not exclusive-
ly represent utility. In the course of production, it has
been exchanged for all the costs of production, such as
raw materials, wages of workers, etc., all of which are
marketable values. The product, therefore, represents, in
the eyes of the producer, a sum total of marketable
values. What he supplies is not only a useful object, but
also and above all a marketable value.

As to demand, it will only be effective on condition
that it has means of exchange at its disposal. These
means are themselves products, marketable value.

In supply and demand, then, we find, on the one hand,
a product which has cost marketable values, and the
need to sell; on the other, means which have cost mar-
ketable values, and the desire to buy.

M. Proudhon opposes the free buyer to the free pro-
ducer. To the one and to the other he attributes purely
metaphysical qualities. It is this that makes him say: “It
is proved that it is man’s free will that gives rise to the
opposition between use value and exchange value.” [1 41]

The producer, the moment he produces in a society
founded on the division of labour and on exchange (and
that is M. Proudhon’s hypothesis), is forced to sell.
M. Proudhon makes the producer master of the means
of production; but he will agree with us that his means
of production do not depend on free will. Moreover,
many of these means of production are products which
he gets from the outside, and in modern production he
is not even free to produce the amount he wants. The
actual degree of development of the productive forces
compels him to produce on such or such a scale.

The consumer is no freer than the producer. His judg-
ment depends on his means and his needs. Both of these
are determined by his social position, which itself de-
pends on the whole social organization. True, the worker

42

KAKL MABX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

who buys potatoes and the kept woman who buys lace
both follow their respective judgments. But the differ-
ence in their judgments is explained by the difference in
the positions which they occupy in the world, and which
themselves are the product of social organization.

Is the entire system of needs founded on estimation
or on the whole organization of production? Most often,
needs arise directly from production or from a state of
affairs based on production. World trade turns almost
entirely round the needs, not of individual consumption,
but of production. Thus, to choose another example, does
not the need for lawyers suppose a given civil law which
is but the expression of a certain development of prop-
erty, that is to say, of production?

It is not enough for M. Proudhon to have eliminated
the elements just mentioned from the relation of supply
and demand. He carries abstraction to the furthest limits
when he fuses all producers into one single producer,
all consumers into one single consumer, and sets up a
struggle between these two chimerical personages. But
in the real world, things happen otherwise. The com-
petition among the suppliers and the competition among
the demanders form a necessary part of the struggle be-
tween buyers and sellers, of which marketable value is
the result.

After having eliminated competition and the cost of
iproduction, M. Proudhon can at his ease reduce the
formula of supply and demand to an absurdity.

“Supply and demand,” he says, “are merely two cere-
monial forms that serve to bring use value and exchange
value face to face, and to lead to their reconciliation.
They are the two electric poles which, when connected,
must produce the phenomenon of affinity called ex-
change.” (Volume I, pp. 49 and 50.)

One might as well say that exchange is merely a
“ceremonial form” for introducing the consumer to the
object of consumption. One might as well say that all

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

43

economic relations are “ceremonial forms” serving im-
mediate consumption as go-betweens. Supply and de-
mand are neither more nor less relations of a given
production than are individual exchanges.

What, then, does all M. Proudhon’s dialectic consist
in? In the substitution for use value and exchange value,
for supply and demand, of abstract and contradictory
notions like scarcity and abundance, utility and estima-
tion, one producer and one consumer, both of them
knights of free will.

And what was he aiming at?

At arranging for himself a means of introducing later
on one of the elements he had set aside, the cost of pro-
duction, as the synthesis of use value and exchange
value. And it is thus that in his eyes the cost of produc-
tion constitutes stjnthetic value or constituted value.

§ 2. CONSTITUTED VALUE OR SYNTHETIC VALUE

“Value (marketable value) is the corner-stone of the
economic structure.” "Constituted" value is the corner-
stone of the system of economic contradictions.

What then is this "constituted value" which is all
M. Proudhon has discovered in political economy?

Once utility is admitted, labour is the source of value.
The measure of labour is time. The relative value of
products is determined by the labour time required for
their production. Price is the monetary expression of the
relative value of a product. Finally, the constituted value
of a product is purely and simply the value which is
constituted by the labour time incorporated in it.

Just as Adam Smith discovered the division of labour,
so he, M. Proudhon, claims to have discovered "consti-
tuted value." This is not exactly “something unheard of,”
but then it must be admitted that there is nothing un-
heard of in any discovery of economic science. M. Proud-

44

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

hon, who appreciates to the full the importance of his
own invention, seeks nevertheless to tone down the
merit thereof “in order to reassure the reader as to his
claims to originality, and to win over minds whose ti-
midity renders them little favourable to new ideas.” But
in apportioning the contribution made by each of his
predecessors to the understanding of value, he is forced
to confess openly that the largest portion, the lion’s
share, of the merit falls to himself.

“The synthetic idea of value had been vaguely per-
ceived by Adam Smith. . . . But with Adam Smith this
idea of value was entirely intuitive. Now, society does
not change its habits merely on the strength of intui-
ftions: its decisions are made only on the authority of
facts. The antinomy had to be stated more palpably and
more clearly: J. B. Say was its chief interpreter.” [I 66]

Here, in a nutshell, is the history of the discovery of
synthetic value: Adam Smith — vague intuition; J. B. Say
— antinomy; M. Proudhon — constituting and “constitut-
ed” truth. And let there be no mistake about it: all the
other economists, from Say to Proudhon, have merely
been trudging along in the rut of antinomy. “It is in-
credible that for the last forty years so many men of
sense should have fumed and fretted at such a simple
idea. But no, values are compared without there being
any point of comparison between them and with no unit
of measurements-, this, rather than embrace the revolu-
tionary theory of equality, is what the economists of the
nineteenth century are resolved to uphold against all
comer.s. What will posterity say about it?” (Vol. I, p. 68).

Posterity, so abruptly invoked, will begin by getting
muddled over the chronology. It is bound to ask itself:
are not Ricardo and his school economists of the nine-
teenth century? Ricardo’s system, putting as a principle
that “the relative value of commodities corresponds ex-
clusively to the amount of labour required for their pro-
duction,” dates from 1817. Ricardo is the head of a

A SCIfilNTmC DISCOVERY

45

whole school dominant in England since the Restora-
tion.’ ‘ The Ricardian doctrine summarizes severely, re-
morselessly, the whole of the English bourgeoisie, which
is itself the type of the modern bourgeoisie. “What will
posterity say about it?” It will not say that M. Prou-
dhon did not know Ricardo, for he talks about him, he
talks at length about him, he keeps coming back to him,
and concludes by calling his system “trash.” If ever
posterity does interfere, it will say perhaps that
M. Proudhon, afraid of offending his readers’ Anglopho-
bia, preferred to make himself the responsible editor of
Ricardo’s ideas. In any case, it will think it very naive
that M. Proudhon should give as a “revolutionary theory
of the future” what Ricardo expounded scientifically as
the theory of present-day society, of bourgeois society,
and that he should thus take for the solution of the an-
tinomy between utility and exchange value what Ricardo
and his school presented long before him as the scientific
formula of one single side of this antinomy, that of ex-
change value. But let us leave posterity alone once and
for all, and confront M. Proudhon with his predecessor
Ricardo. Here are some extracts from this author which
summarize his doctrine on value:

“Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable
value, although it is absolutely essential to it.” (Vol. I,
p. 3, Principes de I’economie politique, etc., translated
from the English by F. S. Constancio, Paris 1835.)

“Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchange-
able value from two sources: from their scarcity, and
from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.
There are some commodities, the value of which is deter-
mined by their scarcity alone. No labour can increase
the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value
cannot be lowered by an increased supply. Some rare
statues and pictures, scarce books . . . are all of this de-
scription. Their value . . . varies with the varying wealth
and inclinations of those who are desirous to possess

KARt MAEX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

4B

them.” (Vol. I, pp. 4 and 5, L. c.) “These commodities,
however, form a very small part of the mass of com-
modities daily exchanged in the market. By far the
greatest part of those goods which are the objects of
desire, are procured by labour; and they may be multi-
plied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost
without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to
bestow the labour necessary to obtain them.” (Vol. I,
p. 5, 1. c.) “In speaking then of commodities, of their
exchangeable value, and of the laws which regulate their
relative prices, wm mean always such commodities only
as can be increased in quantity by the exertion of human
industry, and on the production of which competition
operates without restraint.” (Vol. I, p. 5.)

Ricardo quotes Adam Smith, who, according to him,
“so accurately defined the original source of exchange-
able value” (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I,
Chap. 512 ), and he adds:

“That this (i.e., labour time) is really the foundation
of the exchangeable value of all things, excepting those
which cannot be increased by human industry, is a doc-
trine of the utmost importance in political economy; for
from no source do so many errors, and so much differ-
ence of opinion in that science proceed, as from the
vague ideas which are attached to the word value."
(Vol. I, p. 8.) “If the quantity of labour realized in com-
modities regulate their exchangeable value, every in-
crease of the quantity of labour must augment the value
of that commodity on which it is exercised, as every
diminution must lower it.” (Vol. I, p. 8.)

Ricardo goes on to reproach Smith:

1. With having “himself erected another standard
measure of value” than labour. “Sometimes he speaks of
corn, at other times of labour, as a standard measure;
not the quantity of labour bestowed on the production
of any object, but the quantity it can com.mand in the
market.” (Vol. I, pp. 9 and 10.)

A SCXENTIPIC DISCOVERY

4 ?

2. With having “admitted the principle without quali-
fication and at the same time restricted its application
to that early and rude state of society, which precedes
both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of
land.” (Vol. I, p. 21.)

Ricardo sets out to prove that the ownership of land,
that is, ground rent, cannot change the relative value of
commodities and that the accumulation of capital has
only a passing and fluctuating effect on the relative
values determined by the comparative quantity of labour
expended on their production. In support of this thesis,
he gives his famous theory of ground rent, analyses
capital, and ultimately finds nothing in it but accumul-
ated labour. Then he develops a whole theory of wages
and profits, and proves that wages and profits rise
and fall in inverse ratio to each other, without affecting
the relative value of the product. He does not neg-
lect the influence that the accumulation of capi-
tal and its different aspects (fixed capital and circulat-
ing capital), as also the rate of wages, can have on
the proportional value of products. In fact, they are the
chief problems with which Ricardo is concerned.

“Economy in the use of labour never fails to reduce
the relative value”' of a commodity, whether the saving
be in the labour necessary to the manufacture of the
commodity itself, or in that necessary to the formation
of the capital, by the aid of which it is produced.”
(Vol. I, p. 28.) “Under such circumstances the value of

Ricardo, as is well known, determines the value o-f a com-
mo'dity by the quantity of labour necessary for its production.
Owing, however, to the prevailing form of exchange in every
mode of production based on productiom ol coimmodiities, includ-
ing therefore the capitalist mode of production, this value is not
expressed directly in quantities of Labour but in quantities of
some other commodity. The value of a commodity expressed in
a quantity of some other commodity (whether money or not)
is termed by Ricardo its relative vailue. [Note by F. Engels to
the German edition, 1885,]

48

KARL MARX, ThK POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

the deer, the produce of the hunter’s day’s labour, would
be exactly equal to the value of the fish, the produce
of the fisherman’s day’s labour. The comparative value
of the fish and the game, would be entirely regulated by
the quantity of labour realized in each; whatever might
be the quantity of production, or however high or low
general wages or profits might be.” (Vol. I, p. 32.) “In
making labour the foundation of the value of commod-
ities and the comparative quantity of labour which is
necessary to their production, the rule which determines
the respective quantities of goods which shall be given
in exchange for each other, we must not be supposed to
deny the accidental and temporary deviations of the ac-
tual or market price of commodities from this, their
primary and natural price.” (Vol. I, p. 105, 1. c.) “It is
the cost of production which must ultimately regulate
the price of commodities, and not, as has been often
said, the proportion between supply and demand.”
(Vol. II, p. 253.)

Lord Lauderdale had developed the variations of ex-
change value according to the law of supply and de-
mand, or of scarcity and abundance relatively to de-
mand. In his opinion the value of a thing can increase
when its quantity decreases or when the demand for it
increases; it can decrease owing to an increase of its
quantity or owing to the decrease in demand. Thus the
value of a thing can change through eight different
causes, namely, four causes that apply to the thing it-
self, and four causes that apply to money or to any
other commodity which serves as a measure of its value.
Here is Ricardo’s refutation:

“Commodities which are monopolized, either by an in-
dividual, or by a company, vary according to the law
which Lord Lauderdale has laid down: they fall in pro-
portion as the sellers augment their quantity, and rise
in proportion to the eagerness of the buyers to purchase
them; their price has no necessary connexion with their

A SCIENTn’IC DISCOVERY

49

natural value: but the prices of commodities, which are
subject to competition, and whose quantity may be in-
creased in any moderate degree, will ultimately depend,
not on the state of demand and supply, but on the in-
creased or diminished cost of their production.”
(Vol. II, p. 259.)

We shall leave it to the reader to make the compari-
son between this simple, clear, precise language of
Ricardo’s and M. Proudhon’s rhetorical attempts to ar-
rive at the determination of relative value by labour
time.

Ricardo shows us the real movement of bourgeois pro-
duction, which constitutes value. M. Proudhon, leaving
this real movement out of account, “fumes and frets” in
order to invent new processes and to achieve the reor-
ganization of the world on a would-be new formula,
which formula is no more than the theoretical expres-
sion of the real movement which exists and which is so
well described by Ricardo. Ricardo takes his starting
point from present-day society to demonstrate to us how
it constitutes value — M. Proudhon takes constituted
value as his starting point to construct a new social
world with the aid of this value. For him, M. Proudhon,
constituted value must move around and become once
more the constituting factor in a world already com-
pletely constituted according to this mode of evalua-
tion. The determination of value by labour time, is, for
Ricardo, the law of exchange value; for M. Proudhon,
it is the synthesis of use value and exchange value. Ri-
cardo’s theory of values is the scientific interpretation
of actual economic life; M. Proudhon’s theory of values
is the utopian interpretation of Ricardo’s theory. Ri-
cardo establishes the truth of his formula by deriving it
from all economic relations, and by explaining in this
way all phenomena, even those like ground rent, ac-
cumulation of capital and the relation of wages to profits,
which at first sight seem to contradict it; it is precisely

4—1464

60

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

that which makes his doctrine a scientific systerr
M. Proudhon, who has rediscovered this formula c
Ricardo’s by means of quite arbitrary hypotheses, i
forced thereafter to seek out isolated economic fact
which he twists and falsifies to pass them off as exam
pies, already existing applications, beginnings of real
ization of his regenerating idea. (See our § 3, Applicc
tion of Constituted Value.)

Now let us pass on to the conclusions M. Proudhoi
draws from value constituted (by labour time).

— A certain quantity of labour is equivalent to th
product created by this same quantity of labour.

— Each day’s labour is worth as much as anothe
day’s labour; that is to say, if the quantities are equal
one man’s labour is worth as much as another man’
labour: there is no qualitative difference. With the sam
quantity of work, one man’s product can be given in ex
change for another man’s product. All men are wag-
workers getting equal pay for an equal time of work
Perfect equality rules the exchanges.

Are these conclusions the strict, natural consequence:
of value “constituted” or determined by labour time?

If the relative value of a commodity is determined b’
the quantity of labour required to produce it, it follow:
naturally that the relative value of labour, or wages, i:
likewise determined by the quantity of labour needed t(
produce the wages. Wages, that is, the relative value oi
the price of labour, are thus determined by the laboui
time needed to produce all that is necessary for thf
maintenance of the worker. ''Diminish the cost of pro
duction of hats, and their price will ultimately fall tc
their new natural price, although the demand should b(
doubled, trebled, or quadrupled. Diminish the cost o]
subsistence of men, by diminishing the natural price o;
the food and clothing, by which life is sustained, anc
wages will ultimately fall, notwithstanding that the de

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

6l

mand for labourers may very greatly increase.” (Ri-
cardo, Vol. II, p. 253.)

Doubtless, Ricardo’s language is as cynical as can be.
To put the cost of manufacture of hats and the cost of
maintenance of men on the same plane is to turn men
into hats. But do not make an outcry at the cynicism of
it. The cynicism is in the facts and not in the words
which express the facts. French writers like MM. Droz,
Blanqui, Rossi and others take an innocent satisfaction
in proving their superiority over the English economists,
by seeking to observe the etiquette of a “humanita-
rian” phraseology; if they reproach Ricardo and his
school for their cynical language, it is because it an-
noys them to see economic relations exposed in all
their crudity, to see the mysteries of the bourgeoisie
unmasked.

To sum up: Labour, being itself a commodity, is
measured as such by the labour time needed to produce
the labour-commodity. And what is needed to produce
this labour-commodity? Just enough labour time to pro-
duce the objects indispensable to the constant mainten-
ance of labour, that is, to keep the worker alive and in
a condition to propagate his race. The natural price
of labour is no other than the wage minimum.* If the

* The thesis that the “natural,” i.e., normal, price of labo'Ui'
power cofincMes with the wage minimum, i.e., with the equivalent
in value of the means of subsistence absolutely indi'spenisable
for the life and procreation of the worker, was first put forward
by me in Sketches for a Critique of Political Economy (Deutsche
Franzosische Jahrbucher [Franco-German Annuals], Paris 184^4)
and in The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.
As seen here, Marx at that time accepted the thesis. Lassalle
took it over from both of us. Although, however, in reality wages
have a constant tendency to approach the minimum, the above
thesis is nevertheless incorrect. The fact that labour is regularly
and on the average paid below its value cannot alter its value.
In Capital, Marx has both put the above thesis right (Sectioin
on the Buying and Selling of Labour Power) and also (Chap-
ter 25: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation) analysed

62

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

current rate of wages rises above this natural price, it
is precisely because the law of value put as a principle
by M. Proudhon happens to be counterbalanced by the
consequences of the varying relations of supply and de-
mand. But the minimum wage is none the less the centre
towards which the current rates of wages gravitate.

Thus relative value, measured by labour time, is inev-
itably the formula of the present enslavement of the
worker, instead of being, as M. Proudhon would have
it, the “revolutionary theory” of the emancipation of the
proletariat.

Let us see now to what extent the application of la-
bour time as a measure of value is incompatible with
the existing class antagonism and the unequal distribu-
tion of the product between the immediate worker and
the owner of accumulated labour.

Let us take a particular product, for example, linen.
This product, as such, contains a definite quantity of la-
bour. This quantity of labour will always be the same,
whatever the reciprocal position of those who have col-
laborated to create this product.

Let us take another product; broadcloth, which has re-
quired the same quantity of labour as the linen.

If there is an exchange of these two products, there is
an exchange of equal quantities of labour. In exchanging
these equal quantities of labour time, one does not change
the reciprocal position of the producers, any more
than one changes anything in the situation of the work-
ers and manufacturers among themselves. To say that
this exchange of products measured by labour time re-
sults in an equality of payment for all the producers is
to suppose that equality of participation in the product
existed before the exchange. When the exchange of
broadcloth for linen has been accomplished, the pro-

the circumstances which permit capitalist production to depress
the price of labour power mare and more below its value. [Note
by P. Engels to the German edition, 1885.]

A SCIENTrFIC DISCOVERY

53

ducers of broadcloth will share in the linen in a pro-
portion equal to that in which they previously shared in
the broadcloth.

M. Proudhon’s illusion is brought about by his taking
for a consequence what could be at most but a gratu-
itous supposition.

Let us go further.

Does labour time, as the measure of value, suppose at
least that the days are equivalent, and that one man’s
day is worth as much as another’s? No.

Let us suppose for a moment that a jeweller’s day is
equivalent to three days of a weaver; the fact remains
that any change in the value of jewels relative to that of
woven materials, unless it be the transitory result of the
fluctuations of supply and demand, must have as its
cause a reduction or an increase in the labour time ex-
pended in the production of one or the other. If three
working days of different workers be related to one an-
other in the ratio of 1 : 2 : 3, then every change in the re-
lative value of their products will be a change in this
same proportion of 1 : 2 : 3. Thus values can be measured
by labour tjme, in spite of the inequality of value of dif-
ferent working days; but to apply such a measure we
must have a comparative scale of the different working
days: it is competition that sets up this scale.

Is your hour’s labour worth mine? That is a question
which is decided by competition.

Competition, according to an American economist, de-
termines how many days of simple labour are contained
in one day’s compound labour. Does not this reduction
of days of compound labour to days of simple labour
suppose that simple labour is itself taken as a measure
of value? If the mere quantity of labour functions as a
measure of value regardless of quality, it presupposes
that simple labour has become the pivot of industry. It
presupposes that labour has been equalized by the
subordination of man to the machine or by the extreme

54

KABL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

division of labour; that men are effaced by their labour;
that the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate
a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it
is of the speed of two locomotives. Therefore, we should
not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s
hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth
just as much as another man during an hour. Time is
everything, man is nothing; he is at the most, time’s
carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone de-
cides everything; hour for hour, day for day; but this
equalizing of labour is not by any means the work of
M. Proudhon’s eternal justice; it is purely and simply a
fact of modern industry.

In the automatic workshop, one worker’s labour is
scarcely distinguishable in any way from another work-
er’s labour: workers can only be distinguished one from
another by the length of time they take for their work.
Nevertheless, this quantitative difference becomes, from
a certain point of view, qualitative, in that the time they
take for their work depends partly on purely material
causes, such as physical constitution, age and sex;
partly on purely negative moral causes, such as pati-
ence, imperturbability, diligence. In short, if there is a
difference of quality in the labour of different workers,
it is at most a quality of the last kind, which is far from
being a distinctive speciality. This is what the state of
affairs in modern industry amounts to in the last anal-
ysis. It is upon this equality, already realized in autom-
atic labour, that M. Proudhon wields his smoothing-
plane of “equalization,” which he means to establish
universally in “time to come”!

All the “equalitarian” consequences which M. Prou-
dhon deduces from Ricardo’s doctrine are based on a
fundamental error. He confounds the value of com-
modities measured by the quantity of labour embodied
in them with the value of commodities measured by
“the value of labour” If these two ways of measuring

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

55

the value of commodities were equivalent, it could be
said indifferently that the relative value of any com-
modity is measured by the quantity of labour embodied
in it; or that it is measured by the quantity of labour it
can buy; or again that it is measured by the quantity of
labour which can acquire it. But this is far from being
so. The value of labour can no more serve as a measure
of value than the value of any other commodity. A few
examples will suffice to explain still better what we
have just stated.

If a quarter of wheat cost two days’ labour instead of
one, it would have twice its original value; but it would
not set in operation double the quantity of labour, be-
cause it would contain no more nutritive matter than
before. Thus the value of the corn, measured by the
quantity of labour used to produce it, would have
doubled; but measured either by the quantity of labour
it can buy or by the quantity of labour with which it can
be bought, it would be far from having doubled. On the
other hand, if the same labour produced twice as many
clothes as before, their relative value would fall by half;
but, nevertheless, this double quantity of clothing would
not thereby be reduced to disposing over only half the
quantity of labour, nor could the same labour command
the double quantity of clothing; for half the clothes
would still go on rendering the worker the same service
as before.

Thus it is going against economic facts to determine
the relative value of commodities by the value of labour.
It is moving in a vicious circle, it is to determine rela-
tive value by a relative value which itself needs to be
determined.

It is beyond doubt that M. Proudhon confuses the two
measures, measure by the labour time needed for the
production of a commodity and measure by the value of
the labour. “Any man’s labour,” he says, “can buy the
value it represents.” Thus, according to him, a certain

56

KABL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

quantity of labour embodied in a product is equivalent
to the worker’s payment, that is, to the value of labour.
It is the same reasoning that makes him confuse cost of
production with wages.

“What are wages? They are the cost price of corn, etc.,
the integral price of all things.” Let us go still further.
“Wages are the proportionality of the elements which
compose wealth.” What are wages? They are the value
of labour.

Adam Smith takes as the measure of value, now the
time of labour needed for the production of a commod-
ity, now the value of labour. Ricardo exposes this error
by showing clearly the disparity of these two ways of
measuring. M. Proudhon goes one better than Adam
Smith in error by identifying the two things which the
latter had merely put in juxtaposition.

It is in order to find the proper proportion in which
workers should share in the products, or, in other
words, to determine the relative value of labour, that
M. Proudhon seeks a measure for the relative value of
commodities. To find out the measure for the relative
value of commodities he can think of nothing better
than to give as the equivalent of a certain quantity of
labour the sum total of the products it has created,
which is as good as supposing that the whole of society
consists merely of workers who receive their own pro-
duce as wages. In the second place, he takes for granted
the equivalence of the working days of different work-
ers. In short, he seeks the measure of the relative value
of commodities in order to arrive at equal payment for
the workers, and he takes the equality of wages as an
already established fact, in order to go off on the search
for the relative value of commodities. What admirable
dialectics!

“Say and the economists after him have observed that
labour being itself subject to valuation, being a com-
modity like any other commodity, it is moving in a vici-

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

57

ous circle to treat it as the principle and the determin-
ing cause of value. In so doing, these economists, if they
will allow me to say so, show a prodigious carelessness.
Labour is said to have value not as a commodity itself,
but in view of the values which it is supposed poten-
tially to contain. The value of labour is a figurative ex-
pression, an anticipation of the cause for the effect. It is
a fiction of the same stamp as the productivity of capi-
tal. Labour produces, capital has value. ... By a sort of
ellipsis one speaks of the value of labour. . . . Labour
like liberty ... is a thing vague and indeterminate by
nature, but defined qualitatively by its object, that is to
say, it becomes a reality by the product.” [161]

“But is there any need to dwell on this? The moment
the economist (read M. Proudhon) changes the name of
things, vera rerum vocabula [the true names of things],
he is implicitly confessing his impotence and proclaim-
ing himself not privy to the cause.” (Proudhon, I, 188.)

We have seen that M. Proudhon makes the value of
labour the “determining cause” of the value of products
to such an extent that for him wages, the official name
for the “value of labour,” form the integral price of all
things: that is why Say’s objection troubles him. In la-
bour as a commodity, which is a grim reality, he sees
nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. Thus the whole of
existing society, founded on labour as a commodity, is
henceforth founded on a poetic license, a figurative ex-
pression. If society wants to “eliminate all the draw-
backs” that assail it, well, let it eliminate all the ill-
sounding terms, change the language; and to this end it
has only to apply to the Academy for a new edition of
its dictionary. After all that we have Just seen, it is easy
for us to understand why M. Proudhon, in a work on
political economy, has to enter upon long dissertations
on etymology and other parts of grammar. Thus he is
still learnedly discussing the antiquated derivation of
servus from servare. These philological dissertations

58

KAEL MARX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

have a deep meaning, an esoteric meaning — they form
an essentia! part of M. Proudhon’s argument.

Labour,*® inasmuch as it is bought and sold, is a com-
modity like any other commodity, and has, in conse-
quence, an exchange value. But the value of labour, or
labour as a commodity, produces as little as the value of
wheat, or wheat as a commodity, serves as food.

Labour “is worth” more or less, according to whether
food commodities are more or less dear, whether the
supply and demand of hands exist to such or such a de-
gree, etc., etc.

Labour is not a “vague thing”; it is always some def-
inite labour, it is never labour in general that is bought
and sold. It is not only labour that is qualitatively de-
fined by the object; but also the object which is deter-
mined by the specific quality of labour.

Labour, in so far as it is bought and sold, is itself a
commodity. Why is it bought? “Because of the values it
is supposed potentially to contain.” But if a certain
thing is said to be a commodity, there is no longer any
question as to the reason why it is bought, that is, as
to the utility to be derived from it, the application to be
made of it. It is a commodity as an object of traffic. All
M. Proudhon’s arguments are limited to this: labour is
not bought as an immediate object of consumption. No,
it is bought as an instrument of production, as a ma-
chine would be bought. As a commodity, labour has
value and does not produce. M. Proudhon might just
as well have said that there is no such thing as a com-
modity, since every commodity is obtained merely for
some utilitarian purpose, and never as a commodity in
itself.

In measuring the value of commodities by labour, M.
Proudhon vaguely glimpses the impossibility of exclud-
ing labour from this same measure, in so far as labour
has a value, as labour is a commodity. He has a misgiv-
ing that it is turning the wage minimum into the nat-

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

59

ural and normal price of immediate labour, that it is
accepting the existing state of society. So, to get away
from this fatal consequence, he faces about and asserts
that ^labour is not a commodity, that it cannot have
value. He forgets that he himself has taken the value of
labour as a measure, he forgets that his whole system
rests on labour as a commodity, on labour which is bar-
tered, bought, sold, exchanged for produce, etc., on
labour, in fact, which is an immediate source of income
for the worker. He forgets everything.

To save his system, he consents to sacrifice its basis.

Et propier viiam aivendi perdere causas!^^

We now come to a new definition of “constituted
value.”

“Value is the proportional relation of the products
which constitute wealth.”

Let us note in the first place that the simple phrase
“relative or exchange value” implies the idea of some
relation in which products are exchanged reciprocally.
By giving the name “proportional relation” to this rela-
tion, no change is made in the relative value, except in
the expression. Neither the depreciation nor the enhance-
ment of the value of a product destroys its quality of
being in some “proportional relation” with the other
products which constitute wealth.

Why then this new term, which introduces no new
idea?

“Proportional relation” suggests many other eco-
nomic relations, such as proportionality in production,
the true proportion between supply and demand, etc.,
and M. Proudhon is thinking of all that when he
formulates this didactic paraphrase of marketable
value.

In the first place, the relative value of products being
determined by the comparative amount of labour used in
the production of each of them, proportional relations,

60

KABL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

applied to this special case, stand for the respective
quota of products which can be manufactured in a given
time, and which in consequence are given in exchange
for one another.

Let us see what advantage M. Proudhon draws from
this proportional relation.

Everyone knows that when supply and demand are
evenly balanced, the relative value of any product is ac-
curately determined by the quantity of labour embodied
in it, that is to say, that this relative value expresses the
proportional relation precisely in the sense we have just
attached to it. M. Proudhon inverts the order of things.
Begin, he says, by measuring the relative value of a
product by the quantity of labour embodied in it, and
supply and demand will infallibly balance one another.
Production will correspond to consumption, the product
will always be exchangeable. Its current price will ex-
press exactly its true value. Instead of saying like
everyone else: when the weather is fine, a lot of people
are to be seen going out for a walk, M. Proudhon makes
bis people go out for a walk in order to be able to en-
sure them fine weather.

What M. Proudhon gives as the consequence of mar-
ketable value determined a priori by labour time could
be justified only by a law couched more or less in the
following terms:

Products will in future be exchanged in the exact ratio
of the labour time they have cost. Whatever may be the
proportion of supply to demand, the exchange of com-
modities will alwmys be made as if they had been pro-
duced proportionately to the demand. Let M. Proudhon
take it upon himself to formulate and lay down such a
law, and we shall relieve him of the necessity of giving
proofs. If, on the other hand, he insists on justifying his
theory, not as a legislator, but as an economist, he will
have to prove that the time needed to create a commod-
ity indicates exactly the degree of its utility and marks

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

61

its proportional relation to the demand, and in conse-
quence, to the total amount of wealth. In this case, if a
product is sold at a price equal to its cost of produc-
tion, supply and demand will always be evenly bal-
anced; for the cost of production is supposed to express
the true relation between supply and demand.

Actually, M. Proudhon sets out to prove that the la-
bour time needed to create a product indicates its true
proportional relation to needs, so that the things whose
production costs the least time are the most imme-
diately useful, and so on, step by step. The mere produc-
tion of a luxury object proves at once, according to this
doctrine, that society has spare time which allows it to
satisfy a need for luxury.

M. Proudhon finds the very proof of his thesis in the
observation that the most useful things cost the least
time to produce, that society always begins with the
easiest industries and successively “starts on the pro-
duction of objects which cost more labour time and
which correspond to a higher order of needs.”

M. Proudhon borrows from M. Dunoyer the example
of extractive industry — ifruit-gatbering, pasturage, hunt-
ing, fishing, etc. — which is the simplest, the least costly
of industries, and the one by which man began “the first
day of his second creation.” The first day of his first
creation is recorded in Genesis, which shows us God as
the world’s first manufacturer.

Things happen in quite a different way from what
M. Proudhon imagines. The very moment civilization be-
gins, production begins to be founded on the antagonism
of orders, estates, classes, and finally on the antagonism
of accumulated labour and actual labour. No antagon-
ism, no progress. This is the law that civilization has fol-
lowed up to our days. Till now the productive forces
have been developed by virtue of this system of class
antagonisms. To say now that, because all the needs of
all the workers were satisfied, men could devote them-

62

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

selves to the creation of products of a higher order —
to more complicated industries — would be to leave class
antagonism out of account and turn all historical devel-
opment upside down. It is like saying that because, un-
der the Roman emperors, muraena were fattened in ar-
tificial fishponds, therefore there was enough to feed
abundantly the whole Roman population. Actually, on
the contrary, the Roman people had not enough to buy
bread with, while the Roman aristocrats had slaves
enough to throw as fodder to the muraena.

The price of food has almost continuously risen, while
the price of manufactured and luxury goods has almost
continuously fallen. Take the agricultural industry it-
self; the most indispensable objects, like corn, meat, etc.,
rise in price, while cotton, sugar, coffee, etc., fall in a
surprising proportion. And even among comestibles
proper, the luxury articles, like artichokes, asparagus,
etc., are today relatively cheaper than foodstuffs of
prime necessity. In our age, the superfluous is easier to
prccduce than the necessary. Finally, at different histo-
rical epochs, the reciprocal price relations are not only
different, but opposed to one another. In the whole of
the Middle Ages, agricultural products were relatively
cheaper than manufactured products; in modern times
they are in inverse ratio. Does this means that the util-
ity of agricultural products has diminished since the
Middle Ages?

The use of products is determined by the social condi-
tions in which the consumers find themselves placed,
and these conditions themselves are based on class an-
tagonism.

Cotton, potatoes and spirits are objects of the most
common use. Potatoes have engendered scrofula; cotton
has to a great extent driven out flax and wool, although
wool and flax are, in many cases, of greater utility, if
only from the point of view of hygiene; finally, spirits
have got the upper hand of beer and wine, although

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

63

spirits used as an alimentary substance are everywhere
recognized to be poison. For a whole century, govern-
ments struggled in vain against the European opium;
economics prevailed, and dictated its orders to con-
sumption.

Why are cotton, potatoes and spirits the pivots of
bourgeois society? Because the least amount of labour
is needed to produce them, and, consequently, they have
the lowest price. Why does the minimum price deter-
mine the maximum consumption? Is it by any chance
because of the absolute utility of these objects, their in-
trinsic utility, their utility insomuch as they corre-
spond, in the most useful manner, to the needs of the
worker as a man, and not to the man as a worker? No,
it is because in a society founded on poverty the poor-
est products have the fatal prerogative of being used
by the greatest number.

To say now that because the least costly things are in
greater use, they must be of greater utility, is saying
that the wide use of spirits, because of their low cost of
production, is the most conclusive proof of their utility;
it is telling the proletarian that potatoes are more
wholesome for him than meat; it is accepting the present
state of affairs; it is, in short, making an apology, with
M. Proudhon, for a society without understanding it.

In a future society, in which class antagonism will
have ceased, in which there will no longer be any
classes, use will no longer be determined by the min-
imum time of production; but the time of production de-
voted to different articles will be determined by the de-
gree of their social utility.

To return to M. Proudhon’s thesis; the moment the
labour time necessary for the production of an article
ceases to be the expression of its degree of utility, the
exchange value of this same article, determined before-
hand by the labour time embodied in it, becomes quite
unable to regulate the true relation of supply to de-

64

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

mand, that is, the proportional relation in the sense
M. Proudhon at the moment attributes to it.

It is not the sale of a given product at the price of
its cost of production that constitutes the “proportional
relation” of supply to demand, or the proportional quota
of this product relatively to the sum total of production;
it is the variations in supply and demand that show the
producer what amount of a given commodity he must
produce in order to receive in exchange at least the cost
of production. And as these variations are continually
occurring, there is also a continual movement of with-
drawal and application of capital in the different
branches of industry.

“It is only in consequence of such variations that cap-
ital is apportioned precisely, in the requisite abundance
and no more, to the production of the different commodi-
ties which happen to be in demand. With the rise or fall
of price, profits are elevated above, or depressed below
their general level, and capital is either encouraged to
enter into, or is warned to depart from, the particular
employment in which the variation has taken place.” —
“When we look to the markets of a large town, and ob-
serve how regularly they are supplied both with home
and foreign commodities, in the quantity in which they
are required, under all the circumstances of varying
demand, arising from the caprice of taste, or a change
in the amount of population, without often producing
either the effects of a glut from a too abundant supply,
or an enormously high price from the supply being un-
equal to the demand, we must confess that the principle
which apportions capital to each trade in the precise
amount that is required, is more active than is generally
supposed.” (Ricardo, Vol. I, pp. 105 and 108.)

If M. Proudhon admits that the value of products is
determined by labour time, he should equally admit that
it is the fluctuating movement alone that in society
founded on individual exchanges makes labour the

A SCrENTmC DISCOVERY

6S

measure of value. There is no ready-made constituted
“proportional relation,” but only a constituting move-
ment. ' ! 1

We have just seen in what sense it is correct to speak
of “proportion” as of a consequence of value determined
by labour time. We shall see now how this measure by
time, called by M. Proudhon the “law of proportion,”
becomes transformed into a law of disproportion.

Every new invention that enables the production in
one hour of that which has hitherto been produced in
two hours depreciates all similar products on the market.
Competition forces the producer to sell the product of
two hours as cheaply as the product of one hour. Com-
petition carries into effect the law according to which
the relative value of a product is determined by the la-
bour time needed to produce it. Labour time serving as
the measure of marketable value becomes in this way
the law of the continual depreciation of labour. We will
say more. There will be depreciation not only of the com-
modities brought into the market, but also of the instru-
ments of production and of whole plants. This fact was
already pointed out by Ricardo when he said; “By con-
stantly increasing the facility of production, we con-
stantly diminish the value of some of the commodities
before produced.” (Vol. II p. 59). Sismondi goes further.
He sees in this “value constituted" by labour time, the
source of all the contradictions of modern industry and
commerce. “Mercantile value,” he says, “is alw^ays
determined in the long run by the quantity of labour
needed to obtain the thing evaluated: it is not what it
has actually cost, but what it would cost in future with,
perhaps, perfected means; and this quantity, although
difficult to evaluate, is always faithfully established by
competition. ... It is on this basis that the demand of
the seller as well as the supply of the buyer is reckoned.
The former will perhaps declare that the thing has cost
him ten days’ labour; but if the latter realizes that it can

5—1464

KAEL MAEX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

henceforth be produced with eight days’ labour, in the
event of competition proving this to the two contracting
parties, the value will be reduced, and the market price
fixed at eight days only. Of course, each of the parties
believes that the thing is useful, that it is desired, that
without desire there would be no sale; but the fixing of
the price has nothing to do with utility.” {Etudes, etc.,
Vol. II, p. 267, Brussels edition.)

It is important to emphasize the point that what de-
termines value is not the time taken to produce a thing,
but the minimum time it could possibly be produced in,
and this minimum is ascertained by competition. Sup-
pose for a moment that there is no more competition and
consequently no longer any means to ascertain the mini-
mum of labour necessary for the production of a com-
modity; what will happen? Jt will suffice to spend six
hours’ work on the production of an object, in order to
have the right, according to M. Proudhon, to demand in
exchange six times as much as the one who has taken
only one hour to produce the same object.

Instead of a “proportional relation,” we have a dispro-
portional relation, at any rate if we insist on sticking
to relations, good or bad.

The continual depreciation of labour is only one side,
one consequence cf the evaluation of commodities by la-
bour time. The excessive raising of prices, overproduc-
tion and many other features of industrial anarchy have
their explanation in this mode of evaluation.

But does labour time used as a measure of value give
rise at least to the proportional variety of products that
so delights M. Proudhon?

On the contrary, monopoly in all its monotony follows
in its wake and invades the world of products, just as to
everybody’s knowledge monopoly invades the world of
the instruments of production. It is only in a few
branches of industry, like the cotton industry, that very
rapid progress can be made. The natural consequence

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

67

of this progress is that the products of cotton manufac-
ture, for instance, fall rapidly in price: but as the price
of cotton goes down, the price of flax must go up in
comparison. What will be the outcome? Flax will be
replaced by cotton. In this way, flax has been driven out
of almost the whole of North America. And we have
obtained, instead of the proportional variety of products,
the dominance of cotton.

What is left of this “proportional relation”? Nothing
but the pious wish of an honest man who would like
commodities to be produced in proportions which would
permit of their being sold at an honest price. In all ages
good-natured bourgeois and philanthropic economists
have taken pleasure in expressing this innocent wish.

.'Let us hear what old Boisguillebert says:

“The price of commodities,” he says, “must always be
proportionate-, for it is such mutual understanding alone
that can enable them to e.xist together so as to give
themselves to one another at any moment (here is
M. Proudhon’s continual exchangeability) and recipro-
cally give birth to one another. ... As wealth, then, is
nothing but this continual intercourse between man and
man, craft and craft, etc., it is a frightful blindness to
go looking for the cause of misery elsewhere than In the
cessation of such traffic brought about by a disturbance
of proportion in prices.” {Dissertation sur la nature des
richesses, Daire’s ed. [pp. 405, 408].)*®

Let us listen also to a modern economist:

“The great law as necessary to be affixed to produc-
tion, that is, the law of proportion, which alone can
preserve the continuity of value — The equivalent must
be guaranteed. ... All nations have attempted, at vari-
ous periods of their history, by instituting numerous
commercial regulations and restrictions, to effect, in
some degree, the object here explained. . . . But the natu-
ral and inherent selfishness of man ... has urged him
to break down all such regulations. Proportionate Pro-
5*

68

KA.RL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

duction is the realization of the entire truth of the
Science of Social Economy.” (W. Atkinson, Principles of
Political Economy, London 1840, pp. 170-195.)

Fait Troja}^ This true proportion between supply and
demand, which is beginning once more to be the object
of so many wishes, ceased long ago to exist. It has
passed into the stage of senility. It was possible only at
a time when the means of production were limited,
when the movement of exchange took place within very
restricted bounds. With the birth of large-soale industry
this true proportion had to come to an end, and produc-
tion is inevitably compelled to pass in continuous suc-
cession through vicissitudes of prosperity, depression,
crisis, stagnation, renewed prosperity, and so on.

Those who, like Sismondi, wish to return to the true
proportion of production, while preserving the present
basis of society, are reactionary, since, to be consistent,
they must also wish to bring back all the other condi-
tions of industry of former times.

What kept production in true, or more or less true,
proportions? It was demand that dominated supply, that
preceded it. Production followed close on the heels of
consumption. Large-scale industry, forced by the very
instruments at its disposal to produce on an ever-in-
creasing scale, can no longer wait for demand. Produc-
tion precedes consumption, supply compels demand.

In existing society, in industry based on individual
exchange, anarchy of production, which is the source of
so much misery, is at the same time the source of all
progress.

Thus, one or the other:

Either you want the true proportions of past centuries
with present-day means of production, in which case you
are both reactionary and utopian.

Or you want progress without anarchy: in which case,
in order to preserve the productive forces, you must
abandon individual exchange.

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

69

Individual exchange is suited only to the small-scale
industry of past centuries with its corollary of “true pro-
portion,” or else to large-scale industry with all its train
of misery and anarchy.

After all, the determination of value by labour time —
the formula M. Proudhon gives us as the regenerating
formula of the future — is therefore merely the scientific
expression of the economic relations of present-day so-
ciety, as was clearly and precisely demonstrated by Ri-
cardo long before M. Proudhon.

But does the “equatitarian" application of this formula
at least belong to M. Proudhon? Was he the first to
think of reforming society by transforming all men into
actual workers exchanging equal amounts of labour? Is
it really for him to reproach the Communists — these
people devoid of all knowledge of political economy,
these “obstinately foolish men,” these “paradise dream-
ers” — with not having found, before him, this “solu-
tion of the problem of the proletariat”?

Anyone who is in any way familiar with the trend of
political economy in England cannot fail to know that
almost all the Socialists in that country have, at differ-
ent periods, proposed the equalitarian application of the
Ricardian theory. We could quote for M. Proudhon:
Hodgskin, Political Economy, William Thompson,

An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of
Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness, 1824;
T. R. Edmonds, Practical Moral and Political Economy.
1828‘®, etc., etc., and four pages more of etc. We shall
content ourselves with listening to an English Commu-
nist, Mr. Bray.i9 We shall give the decisive passages in
his remarkable work. Labour’s W'rongs and Labour’s
Remedy, Leeds 1839, and we shall dwell some time upon
it, firstly, becauseMr. Bray is still little known in France,
and secondly, because we think that we have discov-
ered in him the key to the past, present and future
works of M. Proudhon..

70

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

“The only way to arrive at truth is to go at once to
First Principles. . . . Let us ... go at once to the source
from whence governments themselves have arisen. . . .
By thus going to the origin of the thing, we shall find
that every form of government, and every social and
governmental wrong, owes its rise to the existing social
system — to the institution of property as it at present
exists — and that, therefore, if we would end our wrongs
and our miseries at once and for ever, the present
arrangements of society must be totally subverted. . . .
By thus fighting them upon their own ground, and with
their own weapons, we shall avoid that senseless clatter
respecting ‘visionaries' and ‘theorists,' with which they
are so ready to assail all who dare move one step from
that beaten track which ‘by authority,’ has been pro-
nounced to be the right one. Before the conclusions arrived
at by such a course of proceeding can be overthrown,
the economists must unsay or disprove those estab-
lished truths land principles on which their own arguments
are founded. (Bray, pp. 17 and 41.) “It is labour alone
which bestows value — Every man has an undoubted
right to all that his honest labour can procure him.
When he thus appropriates the fruits of his labour, he
commits no injustice upon any other human being; for
he interferes with no other man’s right of doing the
same with the produce of his labour. ... All these ideas
of superior and inferior — of master and man — may be
traced to the neglect of First Principles, and to the
consequent rise of inequality of possessions; and such
ideas will never be eradicated, nor the institutions
founded upon them be subverted, so long as this in-
equality is maintained. Men have hitherto blindly hoped
to remedy the present unnatural state of things ... by
destroying existing inequality, land leaving untouched
the cause of the inequality; but it will shortly be seen
. . . that misgovernment is not a cause, but a conse-
quence — that it is not the creator,, but the created—

A SCIENTIFIC BISCOVERY

7i

a is the offspring of inequality of possessions] and that
the inequality of possessions is inseparably connected
with our present social system.” (Bray, pp. 33, 36 and
37).

“Not only are the greatest advantages, but strict
justice also, on the side of a system of equality. . . .
Every man is a link, and an indispensable link, in the
chain of effects — the beginning of which is but an idea,
and the end, perhaps, the production of a piece of cloth.
Thus, although we may entertain different feelings
towards the several parties, it does not follow that one
should be better paid for his labour than another. The
inventor will ever receive, in addition to his just pecu-
niary reward, that which genius only can obtain from
us — the tribute of our admiration

"From the very nature of labour and exchange, strict
justice not only requires that all exchangers should be
mutually, but that they should likewise be equally, bene-
fited. Men have only two things which they can ex-
change with each other, namely, labour, and the produce
of labour — If a just system of exchanges were acted
upon, the value of all articles would be determined by
the entire cost of production] and equal values should
always exchange for equal values. If, for instance, it
take a hatter one day to make a hat, and a shoemaker
the same time to make a pair of shoes — supposing the
material used by each to be of the same value — and they
exchange these articles with each other, they are not
only mutually but equally benefited: the advantage
derived by either party cannot be a disadvantage to the
other, as each has given the same amount of labour, and
the materials made use of by each were of equal value.
But if the hatter should obtain two pair of shoes for
one hat— time and value of material being as before—
the exchange would clearly be an unjust one. The hatter
would defraud the shoemaker, of .one day’s labour; and
were the former to act thus in all his exchanges, he

72

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

would receive, for the labour of half a year, the product
of some other person’s whole year. We have heretofore
acted upon no other than this most unjust system of
exchanges — the workmen have given the capitalist the
labour of a whole year, in exchange for the value of
only half a year — and from this, and not from the as-
sumed inequality of bodily and mental powers in indi-
viduals, has arisen the inequality of wealth and power
which at present exists around us. It is an inevitable
condition of inequality of exchanges — of buying at one
price and selling at another — that capitalists shall con-
tinue to be capitalists, and working men to be working
men — the one a class of tyrants and the other a class
of slaves — to eternity The whole transaction, there-

fore, plainly shews that the capitalists and proprietors
do no more than give the working man, for his labour
of one week, a part of the wealth which they obtained
from him the week before! — which just amounts to giv-
ing him nothing for something. . . . The whole transac-
tion, therefore, between the producer and the capitalist
is a palpable deception, a mere farce: it is, in fact, in
thousands of instances, no other than a barefaced
though legalized robbery.” (Bray, pp. 45, 48, 49 and
50).

“. . . the gain of the employer will never cease to be
the loss of the employed — until the exchanges between
the parties are equal; and exchanges never can be equal
while society is divided into capitalists and producers —
the last living upon their labour and the first bloating
upon the profit of that labour.

“It is plain [continues Mr. Bray] that, establish what-
ever form of government we will ... we may talk of mo-
rality and brotherly love ... no reciprocity can exist
where there are unequal exchanges. Inequality of ex-
changes, as being the cause of inequality of possessions,
is the secret enemy that devours us.” (Bray, pp. 51 and
52.) ,

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

73

“It has been deduced, also, from a consideration of
the intention and end of society, not only that all men
should labour, and thereby become exchangers, but that
equal values should always exchange for equal values
— and that, as the gain of one man ought never to be
the loss of another, value should ever be determined by
cost of production. But we have seen, that, under the
present arrangements of society ... the gain of the cap-
italist and the rich man is always the loss of the work-
m.an — that this result will invariably take place, and the
poor man be left entirely at the mercy of the rich man,
under any and every form of government, so long as
there is inequality of exchanges — and that equality of
exchanges can be insured only under social arrange-
ments in which labour is universal If exchanges were

equal, would the wealth oif the present capitalists gradual-
ly go from them to the working classes.” (Bray, pp. 53-55.)

“So long as this system of unequal exchanges is
tolerated, the producers will be almost as poor and as
ignorant and as hardworked as they are at present, even
if every governmental burthen be swept away and all
taxes be abolished . . . nothing but a total change of
system — an equality of labour and exchanges — can alter
this state of rights. . . . The producers have but to make
an effort — and by them must every effort for their own
redemption be made — and their chains will be snapped
asunder for ever. ... As an end, the political equality is
there a failure, as a means, also, it is there a failure.

“Where equal exchanges are maintained, the gain of
one man cannot be the loss of another; for every ex-
change is then simply a transfer, and not a sacrifice, of la-
bour and wealth. Thus, although under a social system
based on equal exchanges, a parsimonious man may
become rich, his wealth will be no more than the accu-
mulated produce of his own labour. He may exchange
his wealth, or he may give it to others . . . but a rich
man cannot continue wealthy for any length of time

74

KARL mark, the POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

lafter he has ceased to labour. Under equality of ex-
changes, wealth cannot have, as it now has, a procreative
and apparently self-generating power, such as replen-
ishes all waste from consumption; for, unless it be
renewed by labour, wealth, when once consumed, is
given up for ever. That which is now called profit and
interest cannot exist, as such in connection with equal-
ity of exchanges; for .producer and distributor would
be alike remunerated, and the sum total of their labour
would determine the value of the article created and
brought to the hands of the consumer. . . .

“The principle of equal exchanges, therefore, must
from its very nature ensure universal labour.” (Bray,
pp. 67, 88, 89, 94, 109-110.)

After having refuted the objections of the economists
to communism, Mr. Bray goes on to say:

“If, then, a changed character be essential to the suc-
cess of the social system of community in its most per-
fect form — and if, likewise, the present system affords
no circumstances and no facilities for effecting the
requisite change of character and preparing man for the
higher and better state desired — it is evident that these
things must necessarily remain as they are, ... or else
some preparatory step must be discovered and made use
of — some movement partaking partly of the present and
partly of the desired system — some intermediate resting-
place, to which society may go with all its faults and its
follies, and from which it may move forward, imbued
with those qualities and attributes without which the
system of community and equality cannot as such have
existence.” (Bray, p. 134.)

“The whole movement would require only co-opera-
tion in its simplest form Cost of production would in

every instance determine value; and equal values would
always exchange for equal values. If one person worked
a whole week, and another worked only half a week, the
first would receive double, the remuneration of the last;

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

76

but this extra pay of the one would not be at the expense
of the other, nor would the loss incurred by the last man
fall in any way upon the first. Each person would ex-
change the wages he individually received, for commodi-
ties of the same value as his respective wages; and in
no case could the gain of one man or one trade be a
loss to another man or another trade. The labour of
every individual would alone determine his gains or his
losses. ... I

“. . . By means of general and local boards of trade. . .
the quantities of the various commodities required for
consumption— -the relative value of each in regard to
each other — the number of hands required in various
trades and descriptions of labour — and all other matters
connected with production and distribution, could in a
short time be as easily determined for a nation as for
an individual company under the present arrange-
ments As individuals compose families, and families

towns, under the existing system, so likewise would they
after the joint-stock change had been effected. The pre-
sent distribution of people in towns and villages, bad as

it is, would not be directly interfered with Under

this joint-stock system, the same as under that now
existing, every individual would be at liberty to accu-
mulate as much as he pleased, and to enjoy such accu-
mulations when and where he might think proper. . . .
The great productive section of the community ... is
divided into an indefinite number of smaller sections, all
working, producing and exchanging their products on

a footing of the most perfect equality And the joint-

stock modification (which is nothing but a concession to
present-day society in order to obtain communism), by
being so constituted as to admit of individual property
in productions in connection with a common property in
productive powers — making every individual dependent
on his own exertions, and at the same time allowing him
an equal participation- in every advantage afforded by

76

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHTLOSOPHY

nature and art — is fitted to take society as it is, and to
prepare the way for other and better changes.” (Bray,
pp. 158, 160, 162, 168 and 194.)

We now only need to reply in a few words to Mr. Bray
who without us and in spite of us had managed to sup-
plant M. Proudhon, except that Mr. Bray, far from
claiming the last word on behalf of humanity, proposes
merely measures which he thinks good for a period of
transition between existing society and a community
regime.

One hour of Peter’s labour exchanges for one hour of
Paul’s labour. That is Mr. Bray’s fundamental axiom.

Let us suppose Peter has twelve hours’ labour before
him, and Paul only six. Peter will be able to make with
Paul an exchange of only six for six. Peter will conse-
quently have six hours’ labour left over. What will he
do with these six hours’ labour?

Either he will do nothing — in which case he will have
worked six hours for nothing; or else he will remain idle
for another six hours to get even; or else, as a last re-
source, he wilt give these six hours’ labour, which he
has no use for, to Paul into the bargain.

What in the end will Peter have earned more than
Paul? Some hours of labour? No! He will have gained
only hours of leisure; he will be forced to play the loafer
for six hours. And in order that this new right to loaf
might be not only relished but sought after in the new
society, this society would have to find in idleness
its highest bliss, and to look upon labour as
a heavy shackle from which it must break free at lall
costs.

And indeed, to return to our example, if only these
hours of leisure that Peter has gained in excess of Paul
were really a gain! Not in the least. Paul, beginning by
working only six hours, attains by steady and regular
work a result that Peter secures only by beginning with
an excess of work. Everyone will want to be Paul, there

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVEEY

77

will be a competition to occupy Paul’s position, a com-
petition in idleness.

Well, then! What has the exchange of equal quantities
of labour brought us? Overproduction, depreciation, ex-
cess of labour followed by unemployment; in short, eco-
nomic relations such as we see in present-day society,
minus the competition of labour.

No! We are wrong! There is still an expedient which
may save this new society of Peters and Pauls. Peter will
consume by himself the product of the six hours’ labour
which he has left. But from the moment he has no
longer to exchange because he has produced, he has no
need to produce for exchange; and the whole hypothesis
of a society founded on the exchange and division of
labour will fall to the ground. Equality of exchange will
have been saved by the 'simple fact that exchange will
have ceased to be: Paul and Peter would arrive at the
position of Robinson.

Thus, if all the members of society are supposed to be
actual workers, the exchange of equal quantities of
hours of labour is possible only on condition that the
number of hours to be spent on material production is
agreed on beforehand. But such an agreement negates
individual exchange.

We still come to the same result, if we take as our
starting point not the distribution of the products
created but the act of production. In large-scale industry,
Peter is not free to fix for himself the time of his labour,
for Peter’s labour is nothing without the co-operation
of all the Peters and all the Pauls who make up the
workshop. This explains very well the dogged resistance
which the English factory owners put up to the Ten
Hours’ Bill. They knew only too well that a two-hours’
reduction of labour granted to women and children^”
would carry with it an equal reduction of working hours
for adult men. It is in the nature of large-scale industry
that working hours should be equal for all. What is

78

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

today the result of capital and the competition of work-
ers among themselves will be tomorrow, if you sever the
relation between labour and capital, an actual agree-
ment based upon the relation between the sum of pro-
ductive forces and the sum of existing needs.

But such an agreement is a condemnation of individ-
ual exchange, and we are back again at our first con-
clusion!

In principle, there is no exchange of products — but
there is the exchange of the labour which co-operated
in production. The mode of exchange of products de-
pends upon the mode of exchange of the productive
forces. In general, the form of exchange of products cor-
responds to the form of production. Change the latter,
and the former will change in consequence. Thus in the
history of society we see that the mode of exchanging
products is regulated by the mode of producing them.
Individual exchange corresponds also to a definite mode
of production which itself corresponds to class antagon-
ism. There is thus no individual exchange without the
antagonism of classes.

But the respectable conscience refuses to see this ob-
vious fact. So long as one is a bourgeois, one cannot
but see in this relation of antagonism a relation of
harmony and eternal Justice, which allows no one to
gain at the expense of another. For the bourgeois, indi-
vidual exchange can exist without any antagonism of
classes. For him, these are two quite unconnected things.
Individual exchange, as the bourgeois conceives it, is
far from resembling individual exchange as it actually
exists in practice.

Mr. Bray turns the illusion of the respectable bour-
geois into an ideal he would like to attain. In a purified
individual exchange, freed from all the elements of
antagonism he finds in it, he sees an “equalitarian”
relation which he would like society to adopt gener-
lally.

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

79

Mr. Bray does not see that this equalitarian relation,
this corrective ideal that he would like to apply to the
world, is itself nothing but the reflection of the actual
world; and that therefore it is totally impossible to re-
constitute society on the basis of what is merely an em-
bellished shadow of it. In proportion as this shadow
takes on substance again, we perceive that this sub-
stance, far from being the transfiguration dreamt of,
is the actual body of existing society.*

§3. APPLICATION OF THE LAW
OF THE PROPORTIONALITY OF VALUE

A) Money

“Gold and silver were the first commodities to have
their value constituted.” [I 69]

Thus gold and silver are the first applications of “val-
ue, constituted” ... by M. Proudhon. And as M. Prou-
dhon constitutes the value of products determining it by
the comparative amount of labour embodied in them, the
only thing he had to do was to prove that variations in
the value of gold and silver are always explained by va-
riations in the labour time taken to produce them. M.
Proudhon has no intention of doing so. He speaks of
gold and silver not as commodities, but as money.

* Mr. Bray’s theory, like all theories, has found supporters
who have allowed themselves to be deluded by appearances.
Equiiable-labour-exchange bazaars have been set up in London,
Sheffield, Leeds and many other towns in England. These ba-
zaars have all ended in scandalous failures after having absorbed
considerable capital. The taste for them has gone tor ever. You
are warned, Mr. Proudhon! [Note by Marx] It is known that
Proudhon did not take this warning to heart. In 1849 he him-
self made an attempt with a new Exchange Bank in Paris. The
bank, however, tailed before it had got going properly: a court
case against Proudhon had to serve to cover its collapse. [Note
by F. Engels to the German edition, 1885.]

80

KAEL MAEX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

His only logic, if logic it be, consists in juggling with
the capacity of gold and silver to be used as money
for the benefit oif all the commodities which have
the properly of being evaluated by labour time.
Decidedly there is more naivete than malice in this
jugglery.

A useful product, once it has been evaluated by the la-
bour time needed to produce it, is always acceptable in
exchange; witness, cries M. Proudhon, gold and silver,
which exist in my desired conditions of “exchangeabil-
ity”! Gold and silver, then, are value which has reached
a state, of constitution: they are the incorporation of
M. Proudhon’s idea. He could not have been happier in
his choice of an example. Gold and silver, apart from
their capacity of being commodities, evaluated like oth-
er commodities, in labour time, have also the capacity
of being the universal agents of exchange, of being
money. By now considering gold and silver as lan appli-
cation of "value constituted” by labour time, nothing is
easier than to prove that all commodities whose value is
constituted by labour time will always be exchangeable,
will be money.

A very simple question occurs to M. Proudhon. Why
have gold and silver the privilege of typifying “consti-
tuted value”?

“The special function which usage has devolved upon
the precious metals, that of serving :as a medium for
trade, is purely conventional, and any other commodity
could, less conveniently perhaps, but just as reliably,
fulfil this function. Economists recognize this, and cite
more than one example. What then is the reason for this
universal preference for metals as money? And what is
the explanation of this specialization of the functions of
money — which has no analogy in political economy?. . .
Is it possible to reconstruct the series from which money
seems to have broken away, and hence to trace it back
to its true principle?” [I 68-69]

A SClENTrt'tC DISC50VfiSy

81

straight away, by formulating the question in these
terms, M. Proudhon has presupposed the existence of
money. The first question he should have asked himself
was, why, in exchanges as they are actually constituted,
it has been necessary to individualize exchangeable
value, so to speak, by the creation of a special agent of
exchange. Money is not a thing, it is a social relation.
Why is the money relation a production relation like any
other economic relation, such as the division of labour,
etc.? If M. Proudhon had properly taken account of this
relation, he would not have seen in money an exception,
an element detached from a series unknown or needing
reconstruction.

He would have realized, on the contrary, that this re-
lation is a link, and, as such, closely connected with a
whole chain of other economic relations; that this rela-
tion corresponds to a definite mode of production neith-
er more nor less than does individual exchange. What
does he do? He starts off by detaching money from the
actual mode of production as a whole, and then makes
it the first member of an imaginary series, of a series to
be reconstructed.

Once the necessity for a specific agency of exchange,
that is, for money, has been recognized, all that remains
to be explained is why this particular function has de-
volved upon gold and silver rather than upon any other
commodity. This is a secondary question, which is ex-
plained not by the chain of production relations, but by
the specific qualities inherent in gold and silver as sub-
stances. If all this has made economists for once “go
outside the domains of their own science, to dabble in
physics, mechanics, history and so on,” as M. Prou-
dhon reproaches them with doing, they have merely done
what they were compelled to do. The question was no
longer within the domain of political economy.

“What no economist,” says M. Proudhon, “has either
seen or understood is the economic reason which has de-

6—1464

82

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

termined, in favour of the precious metals, the favour
they enjoy.” [I 69]

This economic' reason which nobody — ^wilh good
ground indeed — has seen or understood, M. Proudhon
has seen, understood and bequeathed to posterity.

‘‘What nobody else has noticed is that, of all commo-
dities, gold and silver were the first to have their value
attain constitution. In the patriarchal period, gold and
silver were still bartered and exchanged in ingots but
even then they showed a visible tendency to become dom-
inant and received a marked degree of preference. Little
by Utile the sovereigns took possession of them and
affixed their seal to them; and of this sovereign con-
secration was born money, that is, the commodity par
excellence, which, notwithstanding all the shocks of com-
merce, retains a definite proportional value and makes
itself accepted for all payments. . . The distinguishing
characteristic of gold and silver is due, I repeat, to the
fact that, thanks to their metallic properties, to the dif-
ficulties of their production, and above all to the inter-
vention of state authority, they early won stability and
authenticity as commodities.”

To say that, of all commodities, gold and silver were
the first to have their value constituted, is to say, after
.all that has gone before, that gold and silver were the
first to attain the status of money. This is M. Proudhon’s
great revelation, this is the truth that none had discov-
ered before him.

If, by these words, M. Proudhon means that of all com-
modities gold and silver are the ones whose time of pro-
duction was known the earliest, this would be yet anoth-
er of the suppositions with which he is so ready to re-
gale his readers. If we wished to harp on this patriarchal
erudition, we would inform M. Proudhon that it was the
time needed to produce objects of prime necessity, such
as iron, etc., which was the first to be known. We shall
spare him Adam Smith’s classic bow.

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVEEY

83

But, after all that, how can M. Proudhon go on talking
about the constitution of a value, since a value is never
constitute, d by itself? It is constituted, not by the time
needed to produce it by itself, but in relation to the quota
of each and every other product which can be created in
the same time. Thus the constitution of the value of gold
and silver presupposes lan already completed constitu-
tion of a number of other products.

It is then not the commodity that has attained, in
gold and silver, the status of “constituted value,” it is
M. Proudhon’s “constituted value” that has attained, in
gold and silver, the status of money.

Let us now make a closer examination of these '‘eco-
nomic reasons” which, according to M. Proudhon, have
bestowed upon gold and silver the advantage of being
raised to the status of money sooner than other products,
thanks to their having passed through the constitutive
phase of value.

These economic reasons are: the “visible tendency to
become dominant,” the “marked preference” even in the
“patriarchal period,” and other circumlocutions about
the actual fact — ^v'hich increase the difficulty, since
they multiply the fact by multiplying the incidents which
M. Proudhon brings in to explain the fact. M. Proudhon
has not yet exhausted all the so-called economic reasons.
Here is one of sovereign, irresistible force;

“Money is born of sovereign consecration; the sover-
eigns take possession of gold and silver and affix their
seal to Ihe.m.” [I 69]

Thus the whim of sovereigns is for M. Proudhon the
highest reason in political economy.

Truly, one must be destitute of all historical knowl-
edge not to know that it is the sovereigns who in all
ages have been subject to economic conditions, but they
have never dictated laws to them. Legislation, whether
political or civil, never does more than proclaim, express
in words, the will of economic reliations.

6 *

84

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

Was it the, sovereign who took possession of gold and
silver to make them the universal agents of exchange by
affixing his seal to them? Or was it not, rather, these
universal agents of exchange which took possession of
the sovereign arid force, d him to affix his seal to them
and thus give them a political consecration ?

The impress which was and is still given to money is
not that of its value but of its weight. The stability and
authenticity M. Proudhon speaks of apply only to^ the
standard of the money; and this standard indicates how
much metallic matter there is in a coined piece of money.
“The sole intrinsic value of a silver mark,” says Volt-
aire, with his habitual good sense, “is a mark of silver,
half a pound weighing eight ounces. The weight and the
standard alone form this intrinsic value.” (Voltaire,
Systeme de Law)?^ But the question: how much is an
ounce of gold or silver worth, remains none the less. If a
cashmere from the Grand Colbert stores bore the trade
mark pure wool, this trade mark would not tell you the
value of the; cashmere. There would still remain the
question: how much is wool worth? “Philip I, King of
France,” says M. Proudhon, “mixes with Charlemagne’s
gold pound a third of alloy, imagining that, having the
monopoly of the manufacture of money, he could do what
is done by every tradesman who has the monopoly of a
product. What wms actually this debasement of the cur-
rency for which Philip and his successors have been so
much blamed? It was perfectly sound reasoning from
the point of view of commercial practice, but very un-
sound economic science, viz., to suppose that, as supply
and demand regulate value, it is possible, either by pro-
ducing an artificial scarcity or by monopolizing manu-
facture, to increase the estimation and consequently the
value of things; and that this is true of gold and silver
as of corn, wine, oil or tobacco. But Philip’s fraud was
no sooner suspected than his money was reduced to its
true value, and he himself lost what he had thought to

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVEHY

86

gain from his subjects. The same thing has happened as
a result of every similar attempt.” [I 70-71]

It has been proved times without number that, if a
prince takes into his head to debase the currency, it is
he who loses. What he gains once at the first issue he
loses every time the falsified coinage returns to him in
the form of taxes, etc. But Philip and his successors
were able to protect themselves more or less against this
loss, for, once the debased coinage was put into circula-
tion, they hastened to order a igeneral re-minting of
money on the old footing.

And besides, if Philip I had really reasoned like
M. Proudhon, he would not have reasoned well “from
the commercial point of view.” Neither Philip I nor
M. Proudhon displays any mercantile genius in imagin-
ing that it is possible to alterthe value of gold as well as
that of every other commodity merely because their value
is determined by the relation between supply and demand.

If King Philip had decreed that one quarter of wheat
was in future to be called two quarters of wheat, he
would have been a swindle, r. He would have deceived all
the rentiers, all the people who were entitled to receive la
hundred quarters of wheat. He would have been the
cause of all these people receiving only fifty instead of a
hundred. Suppose the king owed a hundred quarters of
wheat; he would have had to pay only fifty. But in com-
merce a hundred such quarters would never have been
worth more than fifty. By changing the name we do not
change the thing. The quantity of wheat, whether sup-
plied or demanded, will be neither decreased nor in-
creased by this mere change of name. Thus, the relation
between supply and demand being just the same in spite
of this change of name, the price of wheat will undergo
no re.al change. When we speak of the supply and de-
mand of things, we do not speak of the supply and de-
mand of the name of things. Philip I was not a maker
of gold or silver, as M. Proudhon says; he was a maker

86

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

of nani'es for coins. Pass off your French cashmeres as
Asiatic cashmeres, and you may deceive a buyer or two;
but once the; fraud becomes known, your so-called Asiat-
ic cashmeres will drop to the price of French cashmeres.
When he put a false label on gold and silver, King Phi-
lip could deceive only so long as the fraud was not
known. Like any other shopkeeper, he deceived his cus-
tomers by a false description of his wares, which could
not last fox long. He was bound sooner or later to suffer
the rigour of commercial laws. Is this what M. Proudhon
wanted to prove? No. According to him, it is from the
sovereign and not from commerce that money gets its
value. And what has he really proved? That commerce is
more sovereign than the sovereign. Let the sovereign
decreie that one mark shall in future be two marks, com-
merce will keep on saying that these two marks axe
■worth no more than one mark was formerly.

But, for all that, the question of value determined by
the quantity of labour has not been advanced a step. It
still remains to be decided whether the value of these
two marks .(which have become what one mark was
once) is determined by the cost of production or by the
law of supply and demand.

M. Proudhon continues; “It should even be borne in
mind that if, instead of debasing the; currency, it had
been in the king’s power to double its bulk, the exchange
value of gold and silver would immediately have
dropped by half, always from reasons of proportion
and equilibrium.” [I 71]

If this opinion, which M. Proudhon shares with the
other economists, is valid, it argues in favour of the lat-
ter’s doctrine of supply and demand, and in no way in
favour of M. Proudhon’s proportionality. For, whatever
'the quantity of labour embodied in the doubled bulk of
gold and silver, its value would have dropped by half,
the demand having remained the same and the supply
having doubled. Or can it be, by any chance, that the

A SCIENTII'IC DISCOVEBY

87

"law of proportionality’' would become confused this
time with the so much disdained law of supply and de-
mand? This true proportion of M. Proudhon’s is indeed
so elastic, is capable of so many variations, combina-
tions and permutations, that it might well coincide for
once with the relation between supply and demand.

To make “every commodity acceptable in exchange, if
not in ipraclice then at least by right,” on the basis of
the role of gold and silver is, then, to misunderstand
this role. Gold and silver are acceptable by right only
because they are acceptable in practice; and they are
acceptable in practice because the p'resent organization
of production needs a universal medium of exchange.
Right is only the official recognition of fact.

We have seen that the example of money as an appli-
cation of value which has attained constitution was cho-
sen by M. Proudhon only to smuggle, through his whole
doctrine of exchangeability, that is to say, to prove that
every commodity assessed by its cost of production must
attain the status of money. All this would be very fine,
were it not for the awkward fact that precisely gold and
silver, as money, are of all commodities the only ones
not determined by their cost of production; and this is
so true that in circulation they can be replaced by paper.
So long as there is a certain proportion observed be-
tween the requirements of circulation and the amount of
money issued, be it paper, gold, platinum or copper mon-
ey, there can be no question of a proportion to be ob-
served between the intrinsic value (cost of production)
and the nominal value of money. Doubtless, in interna-
tional trade, money is determined, like any other com-
modity, by labour time. But it is lalso true that gold and
silver in international trade are means of exchange as
products and not as money. In other words, they -lose
this characteristic of “stability and authenticity,” of “sov-
ereign consecration," which, for M. Proudhon, forms
their specific characteristic. Ricardo understood this

88

KAEL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

truth so well that, after basing his whole system on
value determined by labour time, and after saying:
"Gold and silver, like all other commodities, are valua-
ble only in proportion to the quantity of labour neces-
sary to produce them, and bring them to market,” he
adds, nevertheless, that the value of money is not de-
termined by the labour time its substance embodies, but
by the law of supply and demandonly. “Though it [paper
money] has no intrinsic value, yet, by limiting its quan-
tity, its value in exchange is as great as an equal deno-
mination of coin, or of bullion in that coin. On the same
principle, too, namely, by limitation of its quantity, a
debased coin would circulate at the value it should bear,
if it were of the legal weight and fineness, and not at the
value of the quantity of metal which it actually con-
tained. In the history of the British coinage, we find,
accordingly, that the currency was never depreciated in
the same proportion that it was debased; the reason of
which was, that it never was increased in quantity, in
proportion to its diminished intrinsic value.” (RicardO',
loc. cit. [pp. 206-207])

This is what J. B. Say observes on this passage of
Ricardo’s:

“This example should suffice, I think, to convince the
author that the basis of all value is not the amount of
labour needed to make a commodity, but the need felt
for that commodity, balanced by its scarcity.

Thus money, which for Ricardo is no longer a value
determined by labour time, and which J. B. Say there-
fore takes as an example to convince Ricardo that the
other values could not be determined by labour time
either, this money, I say, taken by J. B. Say as an example
of a value determined exclusively by supply and demand,
becomes for M. Proudhon the example par excellence of
the application of value constituted ... by labour time.

To conclude, if money is not a value “constituted” by
labour time, it is all the less likely that it could have

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVEKY

89

anything in common with M. Proudhon’s true “propor-
tion.” Gold and silver are always exchangeable, because
they have the special function of serving as the univer-
sal agent of exchange, and in no wise because they exist
in a quantity proportional to the sum total of wealth;
or, to put it still better, they are always proportional be-
cause, alone of all commodities, they serve as money,
the universal agent of exchange, whatever their quantity
in relation to the sum total of wealth. “A circulation can
never be so abundant as to overflow; for by diminishing
its value, in the same proportion you will increase its
quantity, and bv increasing its value, diminish its quan-
tity.” (Ricardo '[II 205] )

“What an imbroglio this political economy is!” cries
M. Proudhon. [I 72]

“Cursed gold!” cries a Communist flippantly (through
the mouth of M. Proudhon). You might as well say:
Cursed wheat, cursed vines, cursed sheep! — for “just like
gold and silver, every commercial value must attain its
strictly exact determination.” [I 73]

The idea of making sheep and vines lattain the status
of money is not new. In France, it belongs to the age of
Louis XIV. At that period, money having begun to estab-
lish its omnipotence, the depreciation of all other com-
modities was being complained of, and the time when
■“every commercial value” might attain its strictly
exact determination, the status of money, was being
eagerly invoked. Even in the writings of Boisguillebert,
one of the oldest of French economists, we find: “Money
then, by the arrival of innumerable competitors in the
form of commodities themselves, re-established in their
true values, will be thrust back again within its natur-
al limits.” (Economistes financiers du dix-huitieme sie-
cle, Daire edition, p. 422.)

One sees that the first illusions of the bourgeoisie are
also their last.

90

KAHL MAHX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

B) Surplus Labour

“In works on political economy we read this absurd
hypothesis: If the price of everything were doubled. . . .
As if the price of everything were not the proportion
of things — ^and one could double a proportion, a rela-
tion, a law!” (Proudhon, Vol. I, ip. 81.)

Economists have fallen into this error through not
knowing how to apply the “law of proportionality”
and of “constituted value.”

Unfortunately in the very same work by M. Prou-
dhon, Volume I, p. 1 10, we read the absurd hypothesis
that, “if wages rose generally, the price of everything
would rise.” Furthermore, if we find the phrase in ques-
tion in works on political economy, we also find an ex-
planation of it. “When one speaks of the price of all
commodities going up or down, one always excludes
some one commodity. The -excluded commodity is, in
general, money or labour.” {Encyclopaedia Metropoli-
tana or Universal Dictionary of Knowledge, Vol. IV,
Article Political Economy, by Senior, London 1836.
Regarding the phrase under discussion, see also J. St.
Mill: Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political
Economy, London 1844, and Tooke; A History of
Prices, etc., London 1838.24)

Let us pass now to the second application of “con-
stituted value,” and of o-ther proportions — whose only
defect is their lack of proportion. And let us see wheth-
er M. Proudhon is happier here than in the monetiza-
tion of sheep.

“An axiom generally admitted by economists is that
all labour must leave a surplus. In my opinion this
proposition is universally and absolutely true: it is the
corollary of the law of proportion, which may be re-
garded as the summary of the whole of economic sci-
ence. But, if the economists will permit me to say so, the
principle that all labour must leave a surplus is mean-

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVEHY

91

ingless according to their theory, and is not susceptible
of any demonstration." (Proudhon [I 73] )

To prove that all labour must leave a surplus, M.
Proudhon personifies society; he turns it into a person,
Society — a society which is not by any means a society
of persons, since it has its laws apart, which have
nothing in common with the persons of which society
is composed, and its “own intelligence,” which is not
the intelligence of common men, but an intelligence de-
void of common sense. M. Proudhon reproaches the
economists with not having understood the personality
of this collective; being. We have pleasure in confront-
ing him with the following passage from an American
economist, w'ho accuses the economists of just the op-
posite: “The moral entity — the grammatical being called
a nation, has been clothed in attributes that have no
real existence except in the imagination of those who
metamorphose a word into a thing — This has given rise
to many difficulties and to some deplorable misunder-
standings in political economy.” (Th. Cooper, Lectures
on the Elements of Political Economy, Columbia 1826,25)
“This principle of surplus labour,” continues M.
Proudhon, “is true of individuals only because it ema-
nates from society, which thus confers on them the ben-
efit of its own laws.” [I 75]

Does M. Proudhon mean thereby merely that the pro-
duction of the social individual- exceeds that of the
isolated individual? Is M. Proudhon referring to this
excess of the production of associated individuals over
that of non-associated individuals? If so, we could
quote for him a hundred economists who have expressed,
this simple truth without any of the mysticism with
which M. Proudhon surrounds himself. This, for exani-
ple, is what Mr. Sadler says:

“Combined labour produces results whiph individual
exertion could never accomplish. As mankind, there-
fore, multiply in number, the products of their united

92

KABL MAKX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

industry would greatly exceed the amount of lany mere
arithmetical addition calculated on such an increase. . .
In the mechanical larts, as well as in pursuits of sci-
ence, a man may achieve more in a day . . . than a soli-
tary ... individual could perform in his whole life....
Geometry says . . . that the whole is only equal to the
sum of all its parts; as applied to the subject before
us, this axiom would be false. Regarding labour, the
great pillar of human existe;nce, it may be said that the
entire product of combined exertion almost infinitely
exceeds all which individual and disconnected efforts
could possibly accomplish.” (T. Sadler, The Law of
Populaiion, London 1830.^®)

To return to M. Proudhon. Surplus labour, he says, is
explained by the person. Society. The life of this person
is guided by laws, the opposite of those which govern
the activities of man as an individual. He desires to
prove this by “facts.”

“The discovery of an economic process can never
provide the inve,ntor with a profit equal to that which

he procures for society It has been remarked that

railway enterprises are much less a source of wealth
for the contractors than for the state. . . . The average
cost of transporting commodities by road is 18 cen-
times per ton per kilometre, from the collection of the
goods to their delivery. It has been calculated that at
this rate an ordinary railway enterprise would not ob-
tain 10 per cent net profit, a result approximately equal
to that of a road-transport enterprise. But let us sup-
pose that the speed of rail transport compared with
that of road transport is as 4 is to 1. Since in society
time is value itself, the railway would, prices being
equal, present an advantage of 400 per cent over road
transport. Yet this enormous advantage, very real for
so'Ciety, is far from being realized in the same propor-
tion for the carrier, who, while bestowing upon society
an extra value of 400 per cent does not for his own part

A SCffiNTIFIC DISCOVERY

93

draw 10 per cent. To bring the matter home still more
pointedly, let us suppose., in fact, that the railway puts
up its rate to 25 centimes, the cost of road transport
remaining at 18: it would instantly lose all its con-
signments. Senders, receivers, everybody would return
to the van, to the primitive waggon if necessary. The
locomotive would be abandoned. A social advantage of
400 per cent would be sacrificed to a private loss of 35
per cent. The reason for this is easily grasped: the ad-
vantage re, suiting from the speed of the railway is en-
tirely social, and each individual participates in it only
in a minute proportion (it must be remembered that at
the moment we are dealing only with the transport of
goods), while the, loss strikes the consumer directly and
personally. A social profit equal to 400 represents for
the individual, if society is composed only of a million
men, four ten-thousandths; while a loss of 33 per cent
for the consumer would suppose a social deficit of 33
millions.” .(Proudhon [I 75, 76])

Now, we may even overlook the fact that iM. Prou-
dhon expresses la quadrupled speed as 400 per cent of
the original spejed; but that he should bring into rela-
tion the percentage of speed and the percentage of prof-
it land establish a proportion between two relations
which, although measured separately by percentages,
are nevertheless incommensurable with each other, is
to establish a proportion between the percentages with-
out reference to denominations.

Percentages are always percentages, 10 per cent and
400 per cent are commensurable; they are to each other
as 10 is to 400. Therefore, concludes M. Proudhon, a
profit of 10 per cent is worth forty times less than a
quadrupled speed. To save appearances, he says that,
for society, time is money. This error arises from his re-,
collecting vaguely that there is a connection between
value land labour time, and he hastens to identify la-
bour time with transport time; that is, he identifies the

94

KARL MARX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

few firemen, drivers and others, whose labour time is ac-
tually transport time, with the whole of society. Thus
at one blow, speed has become capital, and in this case
he is fully right in saying: “A profit of 400 per cent
will be sacrificed to a loss of 35 ,per cent.” After estab-
lishing this strange proposition as a mathematician,
he gives us the explanation of it as an economist.

“A social profit equal to 400 represents for the individ-
ual, in a society of only a million men, four ten-thou-
sandths.” Agreed; but we are dealing not with 400, but
with 400 per cent, and a profit of 400 per cejit repre-
sents for the individual 400 per cent, neither more nor
less. Whatever be the capital, the dividends will always
be in the ratio of 400 per cent. What does M. Proudhon
do? He takes percentages for capital, and, as if he: were
afraid of his confusion not being manifest enough,
“pointed” enough, he continues:

“A loss of 33 per cent for the consumer would sup-
pose: a social deficit of 33 millions.” A loss of 33 per
cent for the consumer remains a loss of 33 per cent
for la million consumers. How then can M. Proudhon
say pertinently that the social deficit in the case of a
33 per cent loss amounts to 33 millions, whe,n he knows
neither the social capital nor even the capital of a single
one of the persons concerned? Thus it was not enough
for M. Proudhon to have confused capital with percen-
tage-, he surpasses himself by identifying the cap/to/ sunk
in an enterprise with the number of interested parties.

“To bring the matter home still more pointedly let
us suppose in fact” a given capital. A social profit of
400 per cent divided among a millionparticipants, each of
them interested to the extent of one franc, would give 4
francs profit per head — and not 0.0004, as M. Proudhon
alleges. Likewise a loss of 33 per cent for each of the
participants represents a social deficit of 330,000 francs
and not of 33 millions (100:33=1,000,000:330,000).

M. Proudhon, preoccupied with his theory of the per-

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

96

son, Society, forgets to divide by 100, which entails a
loss of 330,000 francs; but 4 francs profit per head
makes 4 million francs profit for society. There remains
for society a net profit of 3,670,000 francs. This accu-
rate calculation proves precisely the contrary of that
which M. Proudhon wanted to prove: namely, that the
profits and losses of society are not in inverse ratio to
the profits and losses of individuals.

Having rectified these simple errors of pure calcula-
tion, let us take a look at the consequences which we
would arrive at, if we admitted this relation between
speed and capital in the case of railways, as M. Prou-
dhon gives it — minus the mistakes in calculation. Let
us suppose that a transport four times as rapid costs
four times as much; this transport would not yield less
profit than cartage, which is four times slower and
costs a quarter the amount. Thus, if cartage takes 18
centimes, rail transport could take 72 centimes. This
would be, according to “the rigour of mathematics,” the
consequence of M. Proudhon’s suppositions — always
minus his mistakes in calculation. But here he is all of
a sudden telling us that if, instead of 72 centimes, rail
transport takes only 25, it would instantly lose all
its consignments. Decidedly we should have to go back
to the van, to the .primitive waggon even. Only, if we
have any advice to give M. Proudhon, it is not to for-
get, in his Programme of the Progressive Association,
to divide by 100. But, alas! it is scarcely to be hoped
that our advice will be listened to, for M. Proudhon is
so delighted with his “progressive” calculation, corre-
sponding to the “progressive association,” that he cries
most emphatically: “I have already shown in Chapter
II, by the solution of the antinomy of value, that the
advantage of every useful discovery is incomparably
less for the inventor, whatever he may do, than for so-
ciety. I have carried the demonstration in regard to
this point to the rigour of mathematicsl”

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

Let US return to the fiction of the person, Society,
a fiction which has no other aim than that of proving
this simple truth — that a new invention which enables
a given amount of labour to produce a greater number
of commodities, lowers the marketable value of the
product. Society, then, makes a profit, not by obtaining
more exchange values, but by obtaining more
commodities for the same value. As for the in-
ventor, competition makes his profit fall successively to
the general level of profits. Has M. Proudhon proved
this proposition as he wanted to? No. This does not
prevent him from reproaching the economists with fail-
ure to prove it. To prove to him on the contrary that
they have proved it, we shall cite only Ricardo and
Lauderdale — Ricardo, the head of the school which de-
termines value by labour lime, and Lauderdale, one of
the most uncompromising defenders of the dete;rmina-
tion of value by supply ;and demand. Both have ex-
pounded the same proposition:

“By constantly increasing the facility of production,
we constantly diminish the value of some of the com-
modities before produced, though by the same means
we not only add to the national riches, but also to the

power of future production As soon as by the aid of

miachinery, or by the knowledge of natural philosophy,
you oblige natural agents to do the work which was
before done by man, the exchangeable value of such
work falls accordingly. If ten men turned a corn mill,
and it be discovered that by the assistance of wind, or of
water, the labour of these ten men may be spared, the flour
which is the produce partly of the work performed by the
mill, would immediately fall in value, in proportion to
the quantity of labour saved; and the society would be
richer by the commodities which the labour of the ten
men could produce, the funds destined for their main-
tenance being in no degree impaired.” (Ricardo [II 59] )

Lauderdale, in his turn, says:

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

97

“In every instance where capital is so employed as
to produce a profit, it uniformly arises, either — from
its supplanting a portion of labour, which would other-
wise be performed by the hand of man; or — from its
performing a portion of labour, which is beyond the
reach of the personal exertion of man to accomplish.
The small profit which the proprietors of machinery gen-
erally acquire, when compared with the wages of la-
bour, which the machine supplants, may perhaps cre-
ate a suspicion of the rectitude of this opinion. Some
fire-engines, for instance, draw more water from a coal-
pit in one day, than could be conveyed on the shoulders
of three hundred men, even assisted by the machinery
of buckets; and a fire-engine undoubtedly performs its
labour at a much smaller expense than the amount of
the wages of thosq whose labour it thus supplants. This
is,' in truth, the case with all machinery. All machines
must execute the labour that was antecedently performed
at a cheaper rate than it could be done by the hand
of man. ... If such a privilege is given for the inven-
tion of a machine, which performs, by the labour of one
man, a quantity of work that used to take the labour of
four; as the possession of the exclusive privilege pre-
vents any competition in doing the work, but what pro-
ceeds from the labour of the workmen, their wages, as
long as the patent continues, must obviously form the
measure of the patentee’s charge; that is to secure em-
ployment, he has only to charge a little less than the
wages of the labour which the machine supplants. But
when the patent expires, other machines of the same
nature are brought into competition; and then his charge
must be, regulated on the same principle as every
other, according to the abundance of machines. . . . The
profit of capital employed. . . , though it arises from sup-
planting labour, comes to be regulated, not by the val-
ue of the labour it supplants, but, as in all other cases,
by the competition among the proprietors of capital;
7—1464

98

KABL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHBLOSOPHY

and it will be great or small in proportion to the quan-
tity of capital that presents itself for performing the
duty, and the demand for it.” [Pp. 119, 123, 124, 125, 134]
Finally, then, so long as the profit is greater than in
other industries, capital will be thrown into the new
industry until the rate of profit falls to the general level.

We have just seen that the example of the railway
was scarcely suited to throw any light on his fiction of
the person. Society. Nevertheless, M. Proudhon boldly
resumes his discourse: “With these points cleared up,
nothing is easier than to qxplain how labour must leave
a surplus for each producer.” [I 77]

What now follows belongs to classical antiquity. It
is a poetical narrative intended to refresh the reader
after the fatigue which the rigour of the preceding math-
ematical demonstrations must have caused him. M.
Proudhon gives the person. Society, the name of Pro-
metheus, whose high deeds he glorifies in these terms:

“First of all, Prometheus emerging from the bosom
of nature awmkes to life, in a delightful inertia, etc., etc.
Prometheus sets to work, and on this first day, the first
day of the second creation, Prometheus’ product, that
is, his wealth, his well-being, is equal to ten. On the
second day, Prometheus divides his labour, and his
product becomes equal to a hundred. On the third day
and on each of the following days, Prometheus invents
machines, discovers new utilities in bodies, new forces
in nature. . . . With every step of his industrial activity,
there is an increase in the number of his products,
which marks an enhancement of happiness for him.
And since, after all, to consume is for him to produce,
it is clear that every day’s consumption, using* up only
the product of the day before, leaves a surplus product
for the next day.” [I 77-78]- •

This Prometheus of M. Proudhon’s, is a queer char-
acter, as weak in logic as in political economy. So
long as Prometheus merely teaches us the division of

A SCIENTmC DISCOVEHY

99

labour, the application of machinery, the exploitation of
natural forces and scientific power, multiplying the pro-
ductive forces of men and giving a surplus compared
with the produce of labour in isoLation, this new Pro-
metheus has the misfortune only of coming too late.
But the moment Prometheus starts talking about pro-
duction and consumption he becomes really ludicrous.
To consume, for him, is to produce; he consumes the
next day what he produced the day before, so that he
is always one day in advance; this day in advance is
his “surplus labour.” But, if he consumes the next day
what he has produced the day before, he must, on the
first day, which had no day before, have done two days’
work in order to be one day in advance later on. How
did Prometheus earn this surplus on the first day, when
there was neither division of labour, nor machinery, nor
even any knowledge of physical forces other than fire?
Thus the question, for all its being carried back “to the
first day of the second creation,” has not advanced la
single step forward. This way of explaining things sa-
vours both of Greek and of Hebrew, it is at once mys-
tical and allegorical. It gives M. Proudhon la perfect
right to say: “I have proved by theory and by facts the
principle that all labour must have a surplus.”

The “facts” are the famous progressive calculation;
the theory is the myth of Prometheus.

“But,” continues M. Proudhon, “this principle, while
being as certain as an arithmetical proposition, is as
yet far from being realized by everyone. Whereas, with
the progress of collective industry, every day’s individ-
ual labour produces a greater and greater product,
and whereas therefore, by a necessary consequence, the
worker with the same wage ought to become richer
every day, there actually exist estates in society which
profit and others which decay.” [I 79-80]

In 1770 the population of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain was 15 million, and the productive popu-

100

KAHL MAEX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

lation was 3 million. The scientific power of production
equalled a population of about 12 million individuals
more. Therefore there were, altogether, 15 million oi
productive forces. Thus the productive power was to
the population as 1 is to 1; and the scientific power was
to the manual power as 4 is to 1.

In 1840 the population did not exceed 30 million; the
productive population was 6 million. But the scientific
power amounted to 650 million; that is, it was to the
whole population as 21 is to 1, and to manual power as
108 is to 1.

In English society the working day thus acquired in
seventy years a surplus of 2,700 per cent productivity;
thai is, in 1840 it produced 27 times as much as in
1770. According to M. Proudhon, the following question
should be raised: why was not the English worker of
1840 twenty-seven times as rich as the one of 1770? In
raising such a question one would naturally be suppos-
ing that the English could have produced this wealth
without the historical conditions in which it was pro-
duced, such as: private accumulation of capital, modern
division of labour, automatic workshops, anarchical
competition, the wage system— in short, everything that
is based upon class antagonism. Now, these were pre-
cisely the necessary conditions of existence for the devel-
opment of productive forces and of surplus labour.
Therefore, to obtain this development of productive
forces and this surplus labour, there had to' be classes
which profited and classes which decayed.

What then, ultimately, is this Prometheus resuscitat-
ed by M. Proudhon? It is society, social reilations based
on class antapnism. These relations are not relations
between individual and individual, but between worker
and capitalist, between farmer and landlord, etc. Wipe
out these relations and you annihilate all society, and
your Prometheus is nothing but a ghost without arms
or legs; that is, without automatic workshops, without

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

101

division of labour — in a word, without everything that
you gave him to start with in order to make him ob-
tain this surplus labour.

If then, in theory, it sufficed to interpret, as M. Prou-
dhon does, the formula of surplus labour in the equali-
tarian sense, without taking into account the actual
conditions of production, it should suffice, in practice,
to share out equally among the workers all the wealth
at present acquired, without changing in any way the
present conditions of production. Such a distribution
would certainly not assure a high degree of comfort to
the individual participants.

But M. Proudhon is not so pessimistic as one might
think. As proportion is everything for him, he has to see in
his fully equipped Prometheus, that is, in present-day soci-
ety, the beginnings of a realization of his favourite idea.

“But everywhere, too, the progress of wealth, that is,
the proportion of values, is the dominant law; and
when economists hold up against the complaints of the
social party the progressive growth of the public
wealth, and the improved conditions of even the most
unfortunate classes, they unwittingly proclaim a truth
which is the condemnation of their theories.” [I 80]

What is, actually, collective wealth, public fortune?
It is the wealth of the bourgeoisie — not that of each
bourgeois in particular. Well, the economists have
done nothing but show how, in the existing relations of
production, the wealth of the bourgeoisie has grown
and must grow still further. As for the working
classes, it still remains a very debatable question whether
their condition has improved as a result of the increase
in so-called public wealth. If economists, in support of
their optimism, cite the; example of the English workers
employed in the cotton industry, they see the condition
of the latter only in the rare moments of trade pros-
perity. These, moments of prosperity lare to the periods
of crisis and stagnation in the “true proportion” of 3

102

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

to 10. But perhaps also, in speaking of improvement,
the economists were thinking of the millions of workers
who had to perish in the East Indies so as to procure for
the million and a half workers employed in England in
the same industry, three years’ prosperity out of ten.

As for the temporary participation in the increase of
public wealth, that is a different matter. The fact of
temporary participation is explained by the theory of
the economists. It is the confirmation of this theory and
not its “condemnation,” as M. Proudhon calls it. If there
were anything to be condemned, it would surely be the
system of M. Proudhon, who would reduce the worker,
as we have shown, to the minimum wage, in spite of the
increase in wealth. It is only by reducing the worker to
the minimum wage that he would be able to apply the
true proportion of values, of “value constituted” — by
labour time. It is because wages, as a result of compe-
tition, oscillate now above, now below, the price of
food necessary for the sustenance of the worker, that
he can participate to a certain extent in the develop-
ment of collective wealth, and can also perish from
want. This is the whole theory of the economists who
have no illusions on the. subject.

After his lengthy digressions on railways, on Prome-
theus, and on the new society to be reconstituted on
“constituted value,” M. Proudhon collects himself; emo-
tion overpowers him and he cries in fatherly tones:

“I beseech the economists to ask themselves for one
moment, in the silence of their hearts — far from the
prejudices that trouble them and regardless of the em-
ployment they are engaged in or hope to obtain, of the
interests they subserve, or the approbation to which
they aspire, of the honours which nurse; their vanity-
let them say whether before this day the principle that
all labour must leave a surplus appeared to them with
this chain of premises and consequences that we have
revealed.” [I 80]

CHAPTER n

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

§ 1. THE METHOD

Here we are, right in Germany! We shall now have
to talk metaphysics while talking political economy.
And in this again we shall but follow M. Proudhon’s
“contradictions.” Just now he forced us to speak Eng-
lish, to become pretty well English ourselves. Now
the scene is changing. M. Proudhon is transporting us
to our dear fatherland and is forcing us, whether we
like it or not, become German again.

' If the Englishman transforms men into hats, the
German transforms hats into ideas. The Englishman
is Ricardo, rich banker and distinguished economist;
the German is Hegel, simple professor of philosophy at
the University of Berlin.

Louis XV, the last absolute monarch and representa-
tive of the decadence of French royalty, had attached
to his person a physician who was himself France’s
first economist. This doctor, this economist, represented
the imminent and certain triumph of the; French bour-
geoisie. Doctor Quesmay made a science out of politi-
cal economy; he summarized it in his famous Tableau
economique. Besides the thousand and one commenta-
ries on this table which have appeared, we possess one
by the doctor himself. It is the “analysis of the eco-
nomic table,” followed by “seven important observa-
tions."^

Ml. Proudhon is another Dr. Quesnay. He is the
Quesmay of the metaphysics of political economy.

104

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

Now metaphysics — indeed all philosophy — can be
summed up, according to Hegel, in method. We must,
therefore, try to elucidate the method of M. Proudhon,
which is at least as foggy as the Economic Table. It is
for this reason that we are making seven more or less
important observations. If Dr. Proudhon is not pleased
with our observations, well, then, he will have to be-
come an Abb§ Baudeau land give the “explanation o-f
the economico-metaphysical method” himself.^®

First Observation

“We are not giving a history according to the order
in time, but according to the sequence of ideas. Econo-
mic phases or categories are in their manifestation some-
times contemporary, sometimes inverted. . . . Econo-
mic theories have none the less their logical sequence
and their serial relation in the understanding: it is this
orde,r that we flatter ourselves to have discovered.”
(Proudhon, Vol. I, p. 146.)

M. Proudhon most certainly wanted to frighten the
French by flinging quasi-Hegelian phrases at them. So
we have to deal with two men: firstly with M. Prou-
dhon, and then with Hegel. How does M. Proudhon dis-
tinguish himself from other economists? And what part
does Hegel play in M. Proudhon’s political economy?

Economists express the relations of bourgeois pro-
duction, the division of labour, credit, money, etc., as
fixed, immutable, eternal categories. M. Proudhon, who
has these ready-made categories before him, wants to
explain to us the act of formation, the genesis of these
categories, principles, laws, ideas, thoughts.

Economists explain how production takes place in
the above-mentioned relations, but what they do not
explain is how these relations themselves are produced,
that is, the historical movement which gave; them birth.
M. Proudhon, taking these relations for principles, ca-

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

105

tegOTies, abstract thoughts, has merely to put into order
these thoughts, which are to be found alphabetically
arranged at the end of every treatise on political eco-
nomy. The economists’ material is the active, energetic
life of man; M. Proudhon’s material is the dogmas of
the economists. But the moment we cease, to pursue
the historical movement of production relations, of
which the categories are but the theoretical expression,
the moment we want to see in these categories no more
than ide,as, spontaneous thoughts, independent of real
relations, we are forced to attribute the origin of these
thoughts to the movement of pure reason. How does
pure, eternal, impersonal reason give rise to these
thoughts? How do^'S it proceed in order to produce
them?

If we had M. Proudhon’s intrepidity in the matter of
Hegelianism we should say: it is distinguished in it-
self from itself. What does this mean? Impersonal rea-
son, having outside itself neither a base on which il
can pose itself, nor an object to which it can oppose
itself, nor a subject with which it can compose itself,
is forced to turn head over heels, in posing itself, op-
posing itself land composing itself — position, opposi-
tion, composition. Or, to speak Greek — we have thesis,
antithesis and synthesis. For those who do not know
the Hegelian language, we shall give the consecrating
formula: — affirmation, negation and negation of the
negation. That is what language means. It is certainly
not Hebrew (with due apologies to M. Proudhon) ; but
it is the language of this pure reason, separate from the
individual. Instead of the ordinary individual with his
ordinary manner of speaking and thinking we have
nothing but this ordinary manner in itself — without the
individual.

Is it surprising that everything, in the final abstrac-
tion — for we have here an abstraction, and not an
analysis — presents itself as a logical category? Is ii

106

KARL MARX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

surprising that, if you let drop little by little all that
constitutes the individuality of a house,, leaving oul
first of all the materials of which it is composed, then
the form that distinguishes it, you end up with nothing
but a body; that, if you leave out of account the limits
of this body, you soon have nothing but a space— that
if, finally, you leave out of account the dimensions of
this space, there is absolutely nothing left but pure
quantity, the logical category? If we abstract thus
from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate
or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying
that in the final abstraction, the only substance left is
the logical categories. Thus the metaphysicians who, in
making these- abstractions, think they are making anal-
yses, and who, the more they detach themselves from
things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer
to the point of penetrating to their core — these meta-
physicians in turn are right in saying that things here
below are embroideries of which the, logical categories
constitute the canvas. This is what distinguishes the
philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in spite
of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos; the
philosopher has n^ver finished with incarnations. If all
that exists, all that lives on land and under water can
be reduced by abstraction to -a logical category — if the
who<le real world can be drowned thus in a world of ab-
stractions, in the w'orld of logical categories — who need
be astonished at it?

All that exists, all that lives on land and under water,
exists and lives only by some kind of movement. Thu®
the movement' of history produces social relations; in-
dustrial movement gives us' industrial products, etc.

Just as by dint of abstraction we have transformed
everything into a logical category, so one has only to
make an abstraction of every characteristic distinctive
of different movements to attain movement in its ab-
stract condition — purely formal movement, the purely

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

|07

logical formula of movement. If one finds in logical cat-
egories the substance of all things, one imagines one
has found in the logical formula of movement the abso-
lute method, which not only explains all things, but
also implies the movement of things.

It is of this absolute method that Hegel speaks in
these terms: “Method is the absolute, unique, supreme,
infinite force, which no object can resist; it is the ten-
dency of reason to find itself again, to recognize itself
in every object.” {Logic, iVol. III.^®) All things being
reduced to a logical category, and every movement,
every act of production, to method, it follows naturally
that every aggregate of products and prodj,iction, of
objects and of movement, can be reduced to a form of
applied metaphysics. What Hegel has done for religion,
law, etc., M. Proudhon seeks to ho for political econ-
omy.

So what is this absolute method? The abstraction of
movement. What is the abstraction of movement? Move-
ment in abstract condition. What is movement in ab-
stract condition? The purely logical formula of move-
ment or the movement oi pure reason. Wherein does' the
movement of pure reason consist? In posing itself, op-
posing itself, composing itself; in formulating itself as
thesis, antithesis, synthesis; or, yet again, in affirming
itself, negating itself and negating its negation.

■ How does reason manage to affirm itself, to pose it-
self in a definite category? That is the business of rea-
son itself and of its apologists. '

But once it has managed to pose itself as a thesis,
this thesis, this thought, opposed to itself, splits up into
two contradictory thoughts' — the positive and the nega-
tive, the yes and the no. The struggle between these
two antagonistic elements comprised in the antithesis
constitutes the dialectical movement. The yes becom-
ing no, the no becoming yes, the yes becoming both yes
and no, the no becoming both hp and yes, the contra:

108

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

ries balance, neutralize, paralyse each other. The fusion
of these two contradictory thoughts constitutes a new
thought, which is the synthesis of them. This thoughi
splits up once again into two contradictory thoughts,
which in turn fuse into a new synthesis. Oif this travail
is born a group of thoughts. This group of thoughts
follows the same dialectic movement as the simple cat-
egory, and has la contradictory group as antithesis.
Of these two groups of thoughts is born a new group
of thoughts, which is the synthesis of them.

Just as from the dialectic movement of the simple
categories is born the group, so from the dialectic
movemenf of the groups is born the series, and from the
dialectic movement of the series is born the entire sys-
tem. I

Apply this method to the categories of political econ-
omy, and you have the logic and metaphysics of po-
litical economy, or, in oth^r words, you have the eco-
nomic categories that everybody knows, translated
into a little-known language which makes them look as
if they had newly blossomed forth in an intellect of
pure reason; so much do these categories seem to engen-
der one another, to be linked up and intertwined with
one another by the very working of the dialectic move-
ment. Th^ reader must not get alarmed at these meta-
physics with all their scaffolding of categories, groups,
series and systems. M. Proudhon, in spite of all the
trouble he has taken to scale the heights of the system
of contradictions, has never been able to raise himself
above the first two rungs of simple thesis and antithe-
sis; and even these he has mounted only twice, and on
one of these two occasions he fell over backwards.

Up to now we have expounded only the dialectics of
Hegel. We shall see later how M. Proudhon has suc-
ceeded in reducing it to the meanest proportions. Thus,
for Hegel, all that has happened land is still happening

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOIMY

109

is only just what is happening in his own mind. Thus
the philosophy ot history is nothing but the history of
philosophy, of his own philosophy. There is no longer
a “history according to th^ order in time,” there is only
“the sequence of ideas in the understanding.” He thinks
he is constructing the world by the movement of
thought, whereas he is merely reconstructing system-
atically land classifying by the absolute method the
thoughts which are in the minds of all.

Second Observation

Economic categories are only the theoretical expres-
sions, the abstractions of the social relations of produc-
tion. M. Proudhon, holding things upside down like la
true philosopher, sees in actual relations nothing but
the incarnation of these principles, of these categories,
which were slumbering — so M. Proudho'n the philoso-
pher tells us — in the bosom of the “impersonal reason
of humanity.”

M. Proudhon the; economist understands very well
that men make cloth, linen or silk materials in definite
relations of production. But what he has not under-
stood is that these definite social relations are just as
much produced by men as linen, flax, e;tc. Social rela-
tions are closely bound up with productive forces. In
acquiring new productive forces men change their
mode of production; and in changing their mode of pro-
duction, in changing the way of earning their living, they
change all their social relations. The handmill gives you
society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with
the industrial capitalist

The same men who establish their social relation's in
conformity with their material productivity, produce
also principles, ideas and categories, in conformity
with their social relations.

KAKL MARX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

110

Thus these ideas, these categories, are as little eter-
nal as the relations they express. They lare historical
and transilory products.

. There is a continual movement of growth in produc-
tive forces, of destruction in social relations, of forma-
tion in ideas; the only immutable thing is the abstrac-
tion of movemept — mors immortalisP

Third Observation

The production relations of every society form a
whole. M. Proudhon considers economic relations las so
many social phases, engendering one. another, result-
ing one from the other like; the antithesis from the the-
sis, and realizing in their logical sequence the imper-
sonal reason of humanity.

The only drawback to this method is that when he
comes to examine a single one of these phases, M.
Proudhon cannot explain it without having recourse to
all the other relations 'Of society; which relations, how-
ever, he has not yet made his dialectic movement en-
gender. When, after that, M. Proudhon, by means of
pure reason, proceeds to give birth to these other
phases, he treats them as if they were new-born babes.
He forgets that they are of the same lage as the first.

Thus, to arrive at the constitution of value, which
for him is the basis of all economic evolutions, he could
not do without division of labour, competition, etc. Yet
in the series, in the understanding of M. Proudhon,
in the logical sequence, these relations did not yet
exist.

In constructing the edifice of an ideological system
by means of the categories of political economy, the
limbs of the social system are dislocated. The different
limbs of society are converted into so many separate
societies, following one' upon the other. How, indeed,
could the single logical formula of movement, of se-

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAE ECONOMY

ill

qivence, of time, explain the structure; of society, in
which all relations coexist simultaneously and support
one another?

Fourth Observation

■ Let us see now to what modifications M. Proudhon
subjects Hegel’s dialectics when he applies it to po-
litical, econoimy.

For him, M. Proudhon, every economic category has
twO' sides — one good, the other bad. He looks upon
these categories as the; petty bourgeois looks- upon the
great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he
did a lot of good; he also did a lot of harm.

The good side and the bad side, the advantages and
the draxvbacks, taken together form for M. Proudhon the
contradiction in every economic category.

The problem to be solved: to keep the good side,
while eliminating the bad.

Slavery is an economic category like any other. Thus
it also has its two sides. Let us leave alone the bad side
and talk about the good side of slavery. Needless to
say we are dealing only with direct slavery, with Negro
slavery in Surinam, in Brazil, in the Southern States of
North America.

Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois
industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you
have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern in-
dustry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value;
it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is
world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale in-
dustry. Thus slavery is an economic -category of the
greatest importance.

Without slavery North America, the most progressive
of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal
country. Wipe North Aril erica off the map of the world,
and you will .have . lanarchy — the complete decay of
modern commerce and civilization. -Cause slavery to .dis-

112

KIABL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

appear and you will have wiped America off the map of
nations."*"'

Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has
always existed among the institutions of the peoples.
Modern nations have been able only to disguise slave-
ry in their own countries, but they have imposed it
without disguise upon the New World.

What would M. Proudhon do to save slavery? He
would formulate the problem thus: preserve the good
side of this economic category, eliminate the bad.

Hegel has no problems to formulate. He has only
dialectics. M. Proudhon has nothing of Hegel’s dialec-
tics but the language. For him the dialectic movement
is the dogmatic distinction between good and had.

Let us for a moment consider M. Proudhon himself
as a category. Let us examine his good and his bad
side, his advantages and his drawbacks.

If he has the advantage over Hegel of setting prob-
lems which he reserves the right of solving for the
greater good of humanity, he has the drawback of be-
ing stricken with sterility when it is a question of en-
gendering a new category by dialectical birth-throes.
What constitutes dialectical movement is the coexist-
ence of two contradictory sides, their conflict and their
fusion into a new category. The very setting of the
problem of eliminating the bad side cuts short the dia-

* This "Was perfectly correct for the year 1847. At that time the
world trade of the United States was limited mainly to im-
port of immigrants and industrial products, and export of cot-
ton and tobacco, i.e., of the products of southern slave labour.
The Ncffthern States prcuduced mainly corn and meat for the slave
states. It was only when the North produced corn and meat for
export and also became an industrial country, and when the
American cotton monopoly had to face powerful competition, in
India, Egypt, Brazil, etc., that the abolition of slavery became
possible. And even then this led to the ruin of the South, which
did not succeed in replacing tfte open Negro slavery by the dis-
guised slavery of Indian and Chinese coolies. [Note by F. Engels
to the German edition, J885.]

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

113

lectic movement. It is not the category which is posed
and opposed to itself, by its contradictory nature, it is
M. Proudhon who gets excited, perplexed and fre;ts and
fumes between the two sides of the category.

Caught thus in a blind alley, from which it is diffi-
cult to escape by legal means, M. Proudhon takes a real
flying leap which transports him at one bound into a
new category. Then it is that to his astonished gaze is
revealed the serial relation in the understanding.

He, takes the first category that comes handy and at-
tributes to it arbitrarily the quality of supplying a rem-
edy for the drawbacks of the category to be purified.
Thus, if we are to believe M. Proudhon, taxes remedy
the drawbacks of monopoly; the balance of trade, the
drawbacks of taxes; landed property, the drawbacks
of credit. i

By taking the economic categories thus successively,
one by one, and making one the antidote to the other,
M. Proudhon manages to make with this mixture of
contradictions land antidotes to contradictions, two
volumes of contradictions, which he rightly entitles: The
System of Economic Contradictions.

Fifth Observation

“In the absolute reason all these ideas . . . are equal-
ly simple, and general In fact, we attain knowl-

edge only by a sort of scaffolding of our ideas. But truth
in itself is independent of these dialectical symbols
and freed from the combinations of our minds.” (Prou-
dhon, Vol. II, p. 97.)

Here all of a sudden, by a kind of switch-over of
which we now know the sqcret, the metaphysics of po-
litical economy has become an illusion! Never has M.
Proudhon spoken more truly. Indeed, from the moment
the process of the dialectic movement is reduced to the
simple process of opposing good to bad, of posing prob-
8—1464

114

ICARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

lems tending to eliminate the bad, and of administer-
ing one category as an antidote to another, the catego-
ries are deprived of all spontaneity; the idea “ceases
to funciion”-, there is no life left in it. It is no longer posed
or decomposed into categories. The sequence of categories
has become a sort of scaffolding. Dialectics has ceased to
be the ijiovement of absolute reason. There is no longer any
dialectics but only, at the most, absolutely pure morality.

When M. Proudhon spoke of the series in the under-
standing, of the Logical sequence of categories, he de-
clared positively that he did not want to give history
according to the order in time, that is, in M. Proudhon’s
view, the historical sequence in which the categories
have manifested themselves. Thus for him everything
happened in the pure ether of reason. Everything was
to be derived from this ether by means of dialectics.
Now that he has to put this diaiectics into practice,
his reason is in default. M. Proudhon’s dialectics runs
counter to Hegej’s dialectics, and now we have M.
Proudhon reduced to saying that the order in which he
gives the economic categories is no longer the order in
which they engender one another. Economic evolutions
are no longer the evolutions of reason itself.

What then does M. Proudhon give us? Real history,
which is, according to M. Proudhon’s understanding,
the sequence in which the categories have manifested
themselves in order of time? ,No! History as it takes
place in the idea itself? Still less! That is^ neither the
profane history of the categories, nor their sacred his-
tory! What history does he give us then? The history of
his own contradictions. Let us see how they go, and
how they drag M. Proudhon' ifi their train.

Before entering upon this examination, which gives
rise to the sixth important observation, we have yet an-
other, less important observation to make.

Let us admit with M. Proudhon that real history, his-
tory according to the order in time, is the historical

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

115

sequence in which ideas, categories and principles
have manifested themselves.

Each principle has had its own century in which to
manifest itself. The principle of authority, for example,
had the eleventh century, just as the principle of indi-
vidualism had the eighteenth century. In logical se-
quence, it was the century that belonged to the princi-
ple, and not the principle that belonged to the century.
In other words it was the principle that made the his-
tory, and not the history that made the principle. When,
consequently, in order to save principles as much as
to save history, we ask ourselves why a particular prin-
ciple was manifcsed in the eleventh or in the eight-
eenth century rather than in any other, we are neces-
sarily forced to examine minutely what meji were like
in the eleventh century, what they were like in the
eighteenth, what were their respective needs, their
productive forces, their mode of production, the raw
materials of their production — in short, what were
the relations between man and man which resulted
from all these conditions of existence. To get to the
bottom of all these questions — what is this but to draw
up the real, profane history of men in every century and
to present these men as both the authors and the actors
of their own drama? But the moment you present men
as the actors and authors of their own history, you ar-
rive — by a detour — at the real starting point, because
you have abandoned those eternal principles of which
you spoke at the outset.

M. Proudhon has not even gone far enough along
the crossroad which an ideologist takes to reach the
main road of history .

Sixth Observation

Let us take the crossroad with M. Proudhon.

We shall concede that economic relations, viewed as
immutable laws, eternal principles, ideal categories,

116

KARL 3VIARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

existed before active and energetic men did; we shall
concede further that these laws, principles and cate-
gories had, since the beginning of time, slumbered “in
the impersonal reason of humanity.” We have already
seep that, with all these changeless and motionless
eternities, there is no history left; there is at most his-
tory in the idea, that is, history reflected in the dialectic
movement of pure reason. M. Proudhon, by saying that,
in the dialectic movement, ideas are, no longer differen-
tiated, has done away with both the shadow of move-
ment and the movement of shadows, by means of which
one could still have cre,ated at least a semblance of his-
tory. Instead of that, he imputes to history his own im-
potence. He lays the blame on everything, even the
French language. “It is not correct then,” says M. Prou-
dhon, the philosopher, “to say that something appears,
that something is produced: in civilization as in the
universe, everything has existed, has acted, from eter-
nity. This applies to the whole of social economy."
(Vol. II, p. 102.)

So great is the productive force of the contradictions
which function and which make M. Proudhon function,
that, in trying to explain history, he is forced to deny
it; in trying to explain the successive appearance of so-
cial relations, he denies that anything can appear: in
trying to explain production, with all its phases, he
questions whether anything can be produced!

Thus, for M. Proudhon, there is no longer any histo-
ry: no longer any sequence of ideas. And yet his book
still exists; and it is precisely that book which is, to use
his own expression, '‘history according to the sequence
of ideas." How shall we find a formula, for iM. Prou-
dhon is a man of formulas, to help him to clear all these
contradictions in one leap?

To this end he has invented a new reason, which is
neither the pure and virgin absolute reason, nor the
common reason of men living and acting in different

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

117

periods, but a reason quite apart — the ire:ason of the
person, Society — of the subject. Humanity — which un-
der the pen of M. Proudhon figures at times also as
social genius, general reason, or finally as human rea-
son. This reason, decked out under so many names,
betrays itself nevertheless, at every moment, as the
individual reason of M. Proudhon, with its good and
its bad side, its antidotes and its problems.

“Human reason does not create truth,” hidden in the
depths of absolute, eternal reason. It can only unveil
it. But such truths as it has unveiled up to now are in-
complete, insufficient and consequently contradictory.
Hence, economic categories, being themselves truths
discovered, revealed by human reason, by social genius,
are equally incomplete and contain within themselves
the germ of contradiction. Before M. Proudhon, social
genius saw only the antagonistic elements, and not the
synthetic formula, both hidden simultaneously in abso-
lute reason. Economic relations, which merely realize
on earth these insufficient truths, these incomplete cat-
egories, these contradictory ideas, are consequently
contradictory in themselves, and present two sides, one
good, the other bad.

To find complete truth, thq idea, in all its fullness, the
synthetic formula that is to annihilate the contradiction,
this is the problem of social genius. This again is why,
in M. Proudhon’s illusion, this same social genius has
been harried from one category to another without ever
having been able, despite all its battery of categories,
to snatch from God or from absolute reason, a synthetic
formula.

“At first, society (social genius) states a primary
fact, puts forward a hypothesis. . . a veritable antinomy,
whose antagonistic results develop in the social econo-
my in the same way as its consequences could have
been deduced in the mind; so that industrial movement,
following in all things the deduction of ideas, splits up

118

KABL MARX, THE POVERTY OE PHILOSOPHY

into two currents, one of useful effects, the other of
subversive results. To bring harmony into the constitu-
tion of this two-sided principle, and to solve this anti-
nomy, society gives rise to a second, which will soon be
followed by a third; and progress of social genius will
take place in this manner, until, having exhausted all
its contradictions — I suppose, but it is not proved that
there is a limit to human contradictions — it returns
in one leap to all its former positions and with a
single formula solves all its problems.” (iVol. I, p.
133 .)

Just as the antithesis was before turned into an anti-
dote, so now the thesis becomes a hypothesis. This
change of terms, coming from iM. Proudhon, has no
longer anything surprising for us! Human reason,
which is anything but pure, having only incomplete
vision, encounters at every step new problems to be
solved. Every new thesis which it discovers in absolute
reason and which is the negation of the first thesis, be-
comes for it a synthesis, which it accepts rather naively
as the solution of the problem in question. It is thus that
this reason frets and fumes in ever renewing contradic-
tions until, coming to the end of the contradictions,
it perceives that all its theses and syntheses are mere-
ly contradictory hypotheses. In its perplexity, “human
reason, social genius, returns in one leap to all its for-
mer positions, and in a single formula, solves all its
problems.” This unique formula, by the way, constitutes
M. Proudhon’s true discovery. It is constituted value.

■ Hypotheses are made only in view of a certain aim.
The aim that social genius, speaking through the mouth
of M. Proudhon, set itself in the first place, was to elim-
inate the bad in every economic category, in order to
have nothing left but the good. For it, the good, the
supreme well-being, the real practical aim, is equality.
And why did the social genius aim at equality rather
than inequality, fraternity, Catholicism, or lany other

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

119

principle? Because “humanity has successively realized
so many separate hypotheses only in view of a superior
hypothesis,” which precisely is equality. In other words:
because equality is M. Proudhon’s ideal. He imagines
that the division of labour, credit, the workshop, — all
economic relations — were invented merely for the bene-
fit of equality, and yet they always ended up by turning
against it. Since history and the fiction of M. Proudhon
contradict each other at every step, the latter concludes
that there is a contradiction. If there is a contradiction,
it exists only between his fixed idea and real movement.

Henceforth the good side of an economic relation is
that which affirms equality; the bad side, that which
negates it and affirms inequality. Every new category
is a hypothesis of the social genius to eliminate the in-
equality engendered by the preceding hypothesis. In
short, equality is the primordial intention, the mystical
tendency, the providential aim that the social genius
has constantly before its eyes as it whirls in the circle
of economic contradictions. Thus Providence is the lo-
comotive which makes the whole of M. Proudhon’s eco-
nomic baggage move better than his pure and volatil-
ized reason. He has devoted to Providence a whole chap-
ter, which follows the one on taxes.

Providence, providential aim, this is the great word
used today to explain the movement of history. In fact,
this word explains nothing. It is at most a rhetorical
form, one of the various ways of paraphrasing facts.

It is a fact that in Scotland landed property acquired
a new value by the development of English industry.
This industry opened up new outlets for wool. In order
to produce wool on a large scale, arable land had to be
transforrned into pasturage. To effect this transforma-
tion, the estates had to be concentrated. To concentrate
the estates, small holdings had first to be abolished,
thousands of tenants had to be driven from their native
soil and a few shepherds in charge of millions of sheep

120

KARL MARX. THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

to be installed in their place. Thus, by successive trans-
formations, landed property in Scotland has resulted in
the driving out of me;n by sheep. Now say that the pro-
vidential aim of the institution of landed property in
Scotland was to have men driven out by sheep, and you
will have made providential history.

Of course, the tendency towards equality belongs to
our century. To say now that all former centuries, with
entirely different needs, means of production, etc., worked
providentially for the realization of equality is, first-
ly, to substitute the means and the men of our century
for the men and the means of earlier centuries and to
misunderstand the historical movement by which the
successive generations transformed the results acquired
by the generations that preceded them. Economists
know very well that the very thing that was for the one
a finished product was for the other but the raw mate-
rial for new production.

Suppose, as M. Proudhon does, that social genius
produced, or rather improvised, the feudal lords with
the providential aim of transforming the settlers into
responsible and equally-placed workejrs: and you will
have effected la substitution of aims and of persons
worthy of the Providence that instituted landed property
in Scotland, in order to give itself the malicious pleasure
of driving out men by sheep.

But since M. Proudhon takes such a tender interest
in Providence, we refer him to the Histoire de I’Bcono-
mie politique of M. de Villeneuve^Bargiemont,3i who
likewise goes in pursuit of a providential aim. This
aim, however, is not equality, but Catholicism.

S ev e nth and Last Observation

Economists have a singular method of procedure.
There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artifi-
cial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artifi-

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

121

cial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural
institutions. In this they resemble the theologians, who
likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion
which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their
own is lan emanation from God. When the economists
say that present-day relations — the relations of bourgeois
production — are natural, they imply that these are the
relations in which wealth is created and productive
forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature.
These relations the;refor'e are themselves natural laws
independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws
which must always govern society. Thus there has been
history, but there is no longer any. There has been his-
tory, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and
in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different
relations of production from those of bourgeois society,
which the economists try to pass off ais natural and as
such, eternal.

Feudalism also had its proletariat — serfdom, which
contained all the gejrms of the bourgeoisie. Feudal pro-
duction also had two antagonistic elements which are
likewise designated by the name of the good side and
the bad side of feudalism, irrespective of the fact that
it is always the bad side that in the end triumphs over
the good side. It is the bad side that produces the move-
ment which makes history, by providing a struggle. If,
during the epoch of the domination of feudalism, the
economists, enthusiastic over the knightly virtues, the
beautiful harmony between rights and duties, the pa-
triarchal life of the towns, the prosperous condition of
domestic industry in the countryside, the development
of industry organized into corporations, guilds and fra-
ternities, in short, everything that constitutes the good
side; of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of
eliminating everything that cast a shadow on this pic-
ture — serfdom, privileges, anarchy — what would have
happened? All the elements which called forth the

122

KAHL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

struggle would have been destroyed, and the develop-
ment of the bourgeoisie nipped in the bud. One would
have, set oneself the absurd problem of eliminating his-
tory.

After the triumph of the bourgeoisie there was no
longer any question of the good or the bad side of feu-
dalism. The bourgeoisie took possession of the produc-
tive forces it had developed under feudalism. All the old
economic forms, the corresponding civil relations, the
political state, which was the official expression of the
old civil society, were smashed.

Thus feudal production, to be judged properly, must
be considered as a mode of production founded on an-
tagonism. It must-be shown how -wealth was produced
within this antagonism, how the productive forces were
developed at the same time as class antagonisms, how
one of the classes, the bad side, the drawback of socie-
ty, went on growing until the material conditions for
its' emancipation had attained full maturity. Is not this
as good as saying that the mode of production, the re-
lations in which productive forces are developed, are
anything' but eternal laws, but that they correspond' to
a definite development of men and of their productive
forces, and that a change in men’s productive forces
necessarily brings about a change in their rela-
tions of production? As the main thing is not to be de-
prived of the fruits of civilization, of the acquired produc-
tive forces, 'the traditional forms in which they were
produced must be smashed. From this moment the rev-
olutionary class becomes conservative.

The bourgeoisie’ begins with a proletariat which is
itself a relic of the proletariats^ of feudal times. In the
course of its historical development, the bourgeoisie
necessarily develops its antagonistic character, which
at first is more or less disguised, existing only in a la-
tent state. As the bourgeoisie develops, there develops
in its bosom, a new proletariat, a modern proletariat;

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

123

the, re develops a struggle between the proletarian class
and the bourgeois class, a struggle which, before being
felt, perceived, appreciated, understood, avowed and
proclaimed aloud by both sides, expresses itself, to start
with, merely in partial and momentary conflicts, in
subversive acts. On the other hand, if all the members
of the modern bourgeoisie have the same interests inas-
much as they form a class as against another class,
they have opposite, antagonistic interests inasmuch as
they stand face to face with one another. This opposi-
tion of interests results from the economic conditions of
their bourgeois life. From day to day it thus becomes
clearer that the production relations in which the bour-
geoisie moves have not a simple, uniform character,
but a dual character; that in the selfsame relations' in
which wealth is produced, poverty is produced also;
that in the selfsame relations in which there is a devel-
opment of the productive forces, there is also la force
producing repression; that these relations produce
bourgeois wealth, i.e, the wealth of the bourgeois class,
only by continually annihilating the wealth of the indi-
vidual members of this class and by producing an ever-
growing proletariat.

The more the antagonistic character comes to light,
the more the economists, the scientific representatives
of bourgeois production, find themselves in conflict with
their own theory; and different schools arise.

We have the fatalist economists, who in their theory
are as indifferent to what they call the drawbacks of
bourgeois production as the bourgeois themselves are
in practice to the sufferings of the proletarians who help
them to acquire wealth. In this fatalist school there lare
Classics and Romantics. The Classics, like Adam Smith
and Ricardo, represent a bourgeoisie which, while still
struggling with the relics of feudal society, works only
to purge economic relations of feudal taints, to increase
the productive forces and to give a new upsurge to in-

124

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

duslry and commerce. The proletariat that takes part in
this struggle and is absorbed in this feverish labour ex-
periences only passing, accidental sufferings, and itself
regards them as such. Economists like Adam Smith and
Ricardo, who are the historians of this epoch, have no
other mission than that of showing how wealth is ac-
quired in bourgeois production relations, of formulat-
ing these relations into categories, into laws, and of
showing how superior these laws, these categories, are
for the production of wealth to the laws and cate-
gories of feudal society. Poverty is in their eyes mere-
ly the pang which accompanies every childbirth, in
nature as in industry.

The Romantics belong to our own age, in which the
bourgeoisie is in direct opposition to the proletariat;
in which poverty is engendered in as great abundance
as wealth. The economists now pose as blase fatal-
ists, who, from their elevated position, cast a proudly
disdainful glance at the human machines who manu-
facture wealth. They copy all the developments
given by their predecessors, and the indifference which
in the latter was merely naivete becomes in them
coquetry.

Next comes the humanitarian school, which sympa-
thizes with the bad side of present-day production rela-
tions. It seeks, by way of easing its conscience, to
palliate even if slightly the real contrasts; it sincerely
deplores the distress of the proletariat, the unbridled
competition of the bourgeois among themselves; it
counsels the workers to be sober, to work hard and to
have few children; it advises the bourgeois to put a
reasoned ardour into production. The whole theory of
this school rests on interminable distinctions between
theory and practice, between principles and results,
between idea and application, between form and con-
tent, between essence and reality, between right and
fact, between the good side and the bad side.

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

126

The philanthropic school is the humanitarian school
carried to perfection. It denies the necessity of antag-
onism; it wants to turn all men into .bourgeois; it
wants to realize theory in so far as it is distinguished
from practice and contains no antagonism. It goes
without saying that, in theory, it is easy to make an
abstraction of the contradictions that are met with at
every moment in actual reality. This theory would
therefore become idealized reality. The philanthropists,
then, want to retain the categories which express bour-
geois relations, without the antagonism which con-
stitutes them and is inseparable from them. They think
they are seriously fighting bourgeois pnactice, and they
are more bourgeois than the others.

Just as the economists are the scientific representa-
tives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and the
Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian
class. So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently
developed to constitute itself as a class, and conse-
quently so long as the struggle itself of the proletariat
with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political
character, and the productive forces are not yet suf-
ficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie it-
self to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material
conditions necessary for the emancipation of the pro-
letariat and for the formation of a new society, these
theoreticians are merely Utopians who, to meet the
wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and
go in search of a regenerating science. But in the
measure that history moves forward, and with it the
struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines,
they no longer need to seek science in their minds;
they have only to take note of what is happening be-
fore their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long
as they look for science and merely make systems, so
long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they
see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in

126

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will over-
throw the old society. From this moment, science,
which is a product of the historical movement, has as-
sociated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be
doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.

Let us return to M. Proudhon.

Every economic relation has a good and a bad side;
it is the one point on which M. Proudhon does not give
himself the lie. He sees the good side expounded by the
economists; the bad side he sees denounced by the
Socialists. He borrows from the economists the neces-
sity of eternal relations; he borrows from the Socialists
the illusion of seeing in poverty nothing but poverty.
He is in agreement with both in wanting to fall back
upon the authority of science. Science for him reduces
itself to the slender proportions of a scientific formu-
la; he is the man in search of formulas. Thus it is
that M. Proudhon flatters himself on having given a
criticism of both political economy and communism;
he is beneath them both. Beneath the economists,
since, as a philosopher who has at his elbow a magic
formula, he thought he could dispense with going into
purely economic details; beneath the Socialists, be-
cause he has neither courage enough nor insight
enough to rise, be it even speculatively, above the
bourgeois horizon.

He wants to be the synthesis — he is a composite
error.

He wants to soar as the man of science above the
bourgeois and the proletarians; he is merely the petty
bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between
capital and labour, political economy and commu-
nism.

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

127

§ 2. DIVISION OF LABOUR AND MACHINERY

The division of labour, according to M. Proudhon,
opens the series of economic evolutions.

“Considered in its essence,
the division of labour is the
Good side of the divi- manner in' ■which equality of
slon of labour j conditions and intelligence is
realized.” (Vol. I, p. 93.)

“The division of labour has
become for us an instrument of
. poverty.” (Vol. I, p. 94.)

Variant

i

Bad side of the divi-\
. sion of labour ]

“Labour, by dividing itself ac-
cording to the law which is pe-
culiar to it, and which is the pri-
mary condition of its fruitful-
ness, ends in the negation of its
aims and destroys itself.” (Vol. I,
p. 94.)

Problem to be solved

To find the “recomposition
which wipes out the drawbacks
of the division, while retaining
its useful effects.” (Vol. I,
p. 97.)

The division of labour is, according to M. Proudhon,
an eternal law, &■ simple, abstract category. Therefore
the abstraction, the idea, the word must suffice for hirtr
to explain the division gf labour at different historical
epochs. Castes, corporations, manufacture, large-scale
industry must be explained by the single word divide.
First study carefully the meaning of “divide,” and you
will have no need to atudy the.inurherous influences

128

KAKL MAHX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

which give the division of labour a definite character
in every epoch.

Certainly, things would be made much too easy if
they were reduced to M. Proudhon’s categories. His-
tory does not proceed so categorically. It took three
whole centuries in Germany to establish the first big
division of labour, the separation of the towns from
the country. In proportion as this one relation of town
and country was modified, the whole of society was
modified. To take only this one aspect of the division
of labour, you have the old republics, and you have
Christian feudalism; you have old England with its
barons and you have modern England with its cotton
lords. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when
there were as yet no colonies, when America did not
yet exist for Europe, when Asia existed only tnrough
the intermediary of Constantinople, when the Mediter-
ranean was the centre of commercial activity, the
division of labour had a very different form, a very
different aspect from that of the seventeenth century,
when the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the
English, and the French had colonies established in
all parts of the world. The extent of the market, its phys-
iognomy, give to the division of labour at different
periods a physiognomy, a character, which it would
be difficult to deduce from the single word divide, from
the idea, from the category.

“All economists since Adam Smith,” says M. Prou-
dhon, “have pointed out the advantages and drawbacks
of the law of division, but insist much more on the
first than on the second, because that was more ser-
viceable for their optimism, and none of them has ever

wondered what could be the drawbacks to a law

How does the same principle, pursued vigorously to
its consequences, lead to diametrically opposite re-
sults? Not one economist before or since A. Smith has
even perceived that here was a problem to elucidate.

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

129

Say goes to the length of recognizing that in the di-
vision of labour the same cause that produces the good
engenders the bad.” [I 95-96]

Adam Smith goes further than M. Proudhon thinks.
He saw clearly that “the difference of natural talents
in different men is, in reality, much less than we are
aware of; and the very different genius which appears
to distinguish men of different professions, when
grown up to maturity, is not so much the cause as the
effect of the division of labour” [I 20].®® In principle,
a porter differs less from a philosopher than a mastiff
from a greyhound. It is the division of labour which
has set a gulf between them. All this does not prevent
M. Proudhon from saying elsewhere that Adam Smith
had not the slightest idea of the drawbacks produced
by the division of labour. It is this again that makes
him say that J. B. Say was the first to recognize “that
in the division of labour the same cause that produces
the good engenders the bad.” [I 96]

But let us listen to Lemontey; Suum cuiqae?*

“M. J. B. Say has done me the honour of adopting
in his excellent treatise on political economy the prin-
ciple that I brought to light in this fragment on the
moral influence of the division of labour. The some-
what frivolous title of my book®® doubtless prevented
him from citing me. It is only to this motive that I
can attribute the silence of a writer too rich in his own
stock to disavow so modest a loan.” (Lemontey, CEu-
vres completes, Vol. I, p. 245, Paris 1840.)

Let us do him this justice: Lemontey wittily exposed
the unpleasant consequences of the division of labour
as it is constituted today, and M. Proudhon found noth-
ing to add to it. But now that, through the fault of
M. Proudhon, we have been drawn into this question
of priority, let us say again, in passing, that long
before M. Lemontey, and seventeen years before Adam
Smith, who was a pupil of A. Ferguson, the last-
9—1464

KABL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHTLOSOPHY

,130

named gave a clear exposition of the subject in a chap-
ter which deals specifically with the division of la-
bour.

“It may even be doubted, whether the measure of
national capacity increases with the advancement of
arts. Many mechanical arts . . . succeed best under a
total suppression of sentiment and reason; and igno-
rance is the mother of industry as well as of supersti-
tion. Reflection and fancy are subject to err; but a
habit of moving the hand, or the foot, is independent
of either. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most,
where the mind is least consulted, and where the work-
shop may, without any great effort of imagination, be
considered as an engine, the parts of which are

men The general officer may be a great proficient

in -the knowledge of war, while the skill of the soldier
is confined to a few motions of the hand and the foot.
The former may have gained what the latter has lost.
. . . And thinking itself, in this age of separations, may
become a peculiar craft.” (A. Ferguson, An Essay on
the History of Civil Society, Edinburgh 1783 [II 108,
109, 110].)

■To bring this literary survey to a close, we expressly
deny that “all economists have insisted far more on
the advantages than on the drawbacks of the division
of labour.” It suffices to mention Sismondi.

Thus, as far as the advantages of the division of
labour are concerned, M. Proudhon had nothing fur-
ther to do than to paraphrase the general phrases
known to everybody.

Let us now see how he derives from the division of
labour, taken as a general law, as a category, as a
thought, the drawbacks which are attached to it. How
is it that this category, this law implies an unequal
distribution of labour to the detriment of M. Prou-
dhon’s equalitarian system?

“At this solemn hour of the division of labour, the

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

131

storm winds begin to blow over humanity. Progress
does not take place for all in an equal and uniform

manner It begins by taking possession of a small

number of the privileged. ... It is this preference for
persons on the part of progress that has for so long kept
up the belief in the natural and providential inequality
of conditions, has given rise to castes, and hierarchi-
cally constituted all societies.” (Proudhon, Vol.I,p. 94.)

The division of labour created castes. Now, castes
are the drawbacks of the division of labour; thus it is
the division of labour that has engendered the draw-
backs. Quod erat demonstrandum}^ Will you go fur-
ther and ask what made the division of labour create
castes, hierarchical constitutions and privileged per-
sons? M. Proudhon will tell you: Progress. And what
made progress? Limitation. Limitation, for M. Prou-
dhon, is acceptance of persons on the part of progress.

After philosophy comes history. It is no longer either
descriptive history or dialectical history, it is compa-
rative history. M. Proudhon establishes a parallel be-
tween the present-day printing worker and the print-
ing worker of the Middle Ages; between the worker of
Creusot and the country blacksmith; between the man
of letters of today and the man of letters of the Middle
Ages, and he weighs down the balance on the side of
those who belong more or less to the division of la-
bour as the Middle Ages constituted or transmitted it.
He opposes the division of labour of one historical
epoch to the division of labour of another historical
epoch. Was that what M. Proudhon had to prove? No.
He should have shown us the drawbacks of the divi-
sion of labour in general, of the division of labour as
a category. Besides, why stress this part of M. Prou-
dhon’s wo.rk, since a Utile later we shall see him for-
mally retract all these alle'ged developments?

, “The first effect of fractional labour,” continues
M. Proudhon, “after the depravation of the .soul, is the

9 *

132

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OE PHILOSOPHY

prolongation of the shifts, which grow in inverse ratio
to the sum total of intelligence expended.... But as
the length of the shifts cannot exceed sixteen to eight-
,een hours per 'day, the moment the compensation
cannot be taken out of the time, it will be taken out of

the price, and the wages will diminish What is

certain, and the only thing for us to note, is that the
universal conscience does not assess at the same rate
the work of a foreman and the labour of a mechanic’s
assistant. It is therefore necessary to reduce the price
of the day’s work; so that the worker, after having
been afflicted in his soul by a degrading function, can-
not escape being struck in his body by the meagre-
ness of his remuneration.” [I 9-7-98]

We pass over the logical value of these syllogisms,
which Kant would call paralogisms which lead astray.

This is the substance of it:

The division of labour reduces the worker to a de-
grading function; to this degrading function corre-
sponds a depraved soul; to the depravation of the soul
is befitting an ever-increasing wage reduction. And to
prove that this reduction is befitting to a depraved
soul, M. Proudhon says, to relieve his conscience, that
the universal conscience wills it thus. Is M. Proudhon’s
soul to be reckoned as a part of the universal conscience?

Machinery is, for M. Proudhon, “the logical antithe-
sis of the division of labour,” and with the help of his
dialectics, he begins by transforming machinery into
the workshop.

After presupposing the modern workshop, in order to
make poverty the outcome of the division of labour,
M. Proudhon presupposes poverty engendered by the
division of labour, in order to come to the workshop
and be able to represent it as the dialectical negation
of that poverty. After striking the worker moratly by
a degrading function, physically by the meagreness of
the wage; after putting the worker under the depen-

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

133

dence of the foreman, and debasing his work to the
labour of a mechanic’s assistant, he lays the blame
again on the workshop and the machinery for degrad-
ing the worker “by giving him a master," and he com-
pletes his abasement by making him “sink from the
rank of artisan to that of common labourer." Excel-
lent dialectics! And if he only stopped there! But no,
he has to have a new history of the division of labour,
not any longer to derive the contradictions from it,
but to reconstruct the workshop after his own fashion.
To attain this end he finds himself compelled to forget
all he has just said about division.

Labour is organized, is divided differently according
to the instruments it disposes over. The hand-mill pre-
supposes a different division of labour from the steam-
mill. Thus it is slapping history in the face to want to
begin by the division of labour in general, in order to
get subsequently to a specific instrument of produc-
tion, machinery.

Machinery is no more an economic category than the
bullock that drags the plough. Machinery is merely a
productive force. The modern workshop, which depends
on the application of machinery, is a social production
relation, an economic category.

Let us see now how things happen in M. Proudhon’s
brilliant imagination.

“In society, the incessant appearance of machinery
is the antithesis, the inverse formula of the division of
labour: it is the protest of the industrial genius against
fractional and homicidal labour. What, actually, is a
machine? A way of uniting different portions of labour
which had been separated by the division of labour.
Every machine can be defined as a summary of several

operations Thus through the machine there will be

a restoration of the worker. . . . Machinery, which in
political economy places itself in contradiction to the
division of labour, represents synthesis, which in the

134

KAEL MAHX, THE POVEETY OP PHILOSOPHY

human mind is opposed to analysis Division mere-

ly separated the different parts of labour, letting each
one devote himself to the speciality which most suited
him; the workshop groups the workers according to the
relation of each part to the whole. ... It introduces the

principle of authority in labour But this is not all;

the machine or the workshop, after degrading the
worker by giving him a master, completes his abase-
ment by making him sink from the rank of artisan to
that of common labourer. . . . The period we are going
through at the moment, that of machinery, is distin-
guished by a special characteristic, the wage worker.
The wage worker is subsequent to the division of la-
bour and to exchange.” [I 135, 136, 161]

Just a simple remark to M. Proudhon. The separa-
tion of the different parts of labour, leaving to each
one the opportunity of devoting himself to the speciality
best suited to him — a separation which M. Proudhon
dates from the beginning of the world— exists only in
modern industry under the rule of competition.

M. Proudhon goes on to give us a most “interesting
genealogy,” to show how the workshop arose from the
division of labour and the wage worker from the workshop.

1) He supposes a man who “noticed that by divid-
ing up production into its different parts and having
each one performed by a separate worker,” the forces
of production would be multiplied.

2) This man, “grasping the thread of this idea, tells
himself that, by forming a permanent group of workers
selected for the special purpose he sets himself, he will
obtain a more sustained production, etc.” [I 161]

3) This man makes a proposal to other men, to make
them grasp his idea and the thread of his idea.

4) This man, at the beginning of industry, deals on
terms of equality with his companions who later be-
come his workmen.

5) One realizes, in fact, that this original equality

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY 136

had rapidly to disappear in view of the advantageous
position of the master and the dependence of the
wage-earner.” [I 163]

That is another example of M. Proudhon’s historical
and descriptive method.

Let us now examine, from the historical and eco-
nomic point of view, whether the workshop or the ma-
chine really introduced the principle of authority in
society subsequently to the division of labour; whether
it rehabilitated the worker on the one hand, while sub-
mitting him to authority on the other; whether the
machine is the recomposition of divided labour, the syn-
thesis of labour as opposed to its analysis.

Society as a whole has this in common with the in-
terior of a workshop, that it too has its division of
labour. If one took as a model the division of labour
in a modern workshop, in order to apply it to a whole
society, the society best organized for the production
of wealth would undoubtedly be that which had- a single
chief employer, distributing tasks to the different mem-
bers of the community according to a previously fixed
rule. But this is by no means the case. While inside
the modern workshop the division of labour is metic-
ulously regulated by the authority of the employer,
modern society has no other rule, no other authority
for the distribution of labour than free competition. ■

Under the patriarchal system, under the caste sys-
tem, under the feudal and corporative system, there
was division of labour in the whole of society accord^
ing to .'fixed rules. Were these rules established by *a'
legislator? No. Originally born of the conditions of
material production, they were raised to the status of
laws only much later. In this way these different forprs
of the division of labour be’came so many bases of So-
cial organization. As for the division of labour in the
workshop,, it.was..verv little develdoed in all these forms
of. society.

136

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

It can even be laid down as a general rule that the
less authority presides over the division of labour in-
side society, the more the division of labour develops
inside the workshop, and the more it is subjected there
to the authority of a single person. Thus authority in
the workshop and authority in society, in relation to
the division of labour, are in inverse ratio to each
other.

The question now is what kind of workshop it is in
which the occupations are very much separated, where
each worker’s task is reduced to a very simple opera-
tion, and where the authority, capital, groups and di-
rects the work. How was this workshop brought into
existence? In order to answer this question we shall
have to examine how manufacturing industry, prop-
erly so-called, has developed. I am speaking here of
that industry which is not yet modern industry, with
its machinery, but which is already no longer the in-
dustry of the artisans of the Middle Ages, nor domes-
tic industry. We shall not go into great detail: we shall
merely give a few main points to show that history is
not to be made with formulas.

One of the most indispensable conditions for the for-
mation of manufacturing industry was the accumula-
tion of capital, facilitated by the discovery of America
and the import of its precious metals.

. It is sufficiently proved that the increase in the
means of exchange resulted in the depreciation of
wages and land rents, on the one hand, and the growth
of industrial profits on the other. In other words: to the
extent that the propertied class and the working class,
the feudal lords and the people, sank, to that extent the
capitalist class,, the bourgeoisie, rose.

. There, were yet other circumstances which contribut-
ed" simultaneously to the development of manufacturing
increase pf commodities put iijto circu-
Istion from the moment that trade had penetrated- to

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

137

the East Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope; the
colonial system; the development of maritime trade.

Another point which has not yet been sufficiently
appreciated in the history of manufacturing industry
is the disbanding of the numerous retinues of feudal
lords, whose subordinate ranks became vagrants be-
fore entering the workshop. The creation of the work-
shop was preceded by an almost universal vagrancy in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The workshop
found, besides, a powerful support in the many peas-
ants who, continually driven from the country owing
to the transformation of the fields into pastures and
to the progress in agriculture which necessitated fewer
hands for the tillage of the soil, went on congregating
in the towns during whole centuries.

The growth of the market, the accumulation of
capital, the modification in the social position of the
classes, a large number of persons being deprived of
their sources of income, all these are historical pre-
conditions for the formation of manufacture. It was
not, as M. Proudhon says, friendly agreements between
equals that brought men together into the workshop. It
was not even in the bosom of the old guilds that man-
ufacture was born. It was the merchant that became
the head of the modern workshop, and not the old guild-
master. Almost everywhere there was a desperate
struggle between manufacture and crafts.

The accumulation and concentration of instruments
and workers preceded the development of the division
of labour inside the workshop. Manufacture consisted
much more in the bringing together of many workers
and many crafts in one place, in one room under the
command of one capital, than in the analysis of labour
and the adaptation of a special worker to a very sim-
ple task.

The utility of a workshop consisted much less in the
division of labour as such than ip the circumstance

138

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

that work was done on a much larger scale, that many-
unnecessary expenses were saved, etc. At the end of the
sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
Dutch manufacture scarcely knew any division of labour.

The development of the division of labour supposes
the assemblage of workers in a workshop. There is not
one single example, whether in the sixteenth or in the
seventeenth century, of the different branches of one
and the same craft being exploited separately to such
an extent that it would have sufficed to assemble them
all in one place so as to obtain a complete, ready-made
workshop. But once the men and the instruments had
been brought together, the division of labour, such as
it had existed in the form- of the guilds, was repro-
duced, necessarily reflected inside the workshop.

For M. Proudhon, who sees things upside down, it
he sees them at all, the division of labour, in Adam
Smith’s sense, precedes the workshop, which is a con-
dition of its existence.

Machinery, properly so-called, dates from the end
of the eighteenth century. ISlothing is more absurd than
to see in machinery the antithesis of the division of
labour, the synthesis restoring unity to divided labour.

The machine is a unification of the instruments of
labour, and by no means a combination of different
operations for the worker himself. “When, by the divi-
sion of labour, each particular operation has been sim-
plified to the use of a single instrument, the linking-up
of all these instruments, set in motion by a single en-
gine, constitutes — a machine.” (Babbage, Traite sur
I’Economie des machines, etc., Paris 1833.®^) Simple
tools; accumulation of tools; composite tools; setting
in motion of a composite tool by a single hand engine,
by man; setting in motion of these instruments by na-
tural forces, machines; system of machines having one
motor; system of machines having one automatic mo-
tor— this is the progress of machinery.

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

139

The concentration of the instruments of production
and the division of labour are as inseparable one from
the other as are, in the political sphere, the concentra-
tion of public authority and the division of private in-
terests. England, with the concentration of the land,
this instrument of agricultural labour, has at the same
time division of agricultural labour and the applica-
tion of machinery to the exploitation of the soil. France,
which has the division of the instruments, the small
holdings system, has, in general, neither division of agri-
cultural labour nor application of machinery to the soil.

For M. Proudhon the concentration of the instruments
of labour is the negation of the division of labour. In
reality we find again the reverse. As the concentration
of instruments develops, the division develops also, and
vice versa. This is why every big mechanical inven-
tion is followed by a greater division of labour, and
each increase in the division of labour gives rise in
turn to new mechanical inventions.

We need not recall the fact that the great progress
of the division of labour began in England after the
invention of machinery. Thus the weavers and spin-
ners were for the most part peasants like those one
still meets in backward countries. The invention of
machinery brought about the separation of manufac-
turing industry from agricultural industry. The weaver
and the spinner, united but lately in a single family,
were separated by the machine. Thanks to the ma-
chine, the spinner can live in England while the weaver
resides in the East Indies. Before the invention of ma-
chinery, the industry of a country was carried on
chiefly with raw materials that were the products of its
own soil; in England — wool, in Germany — flax, in
France — silks and flax, in the East Indies and the Le-
vant— -cotton, etc. Thanks to the application of machi-
nery and of steam, the division of labour was able to
assume such dimensions that large-scale industry, de-

140

KABL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

tached from the national soil, depends entirely on the
world market, on international exchange, on an inter-
national division of labour. In short — the machine has
so great an influence on the division of labour, that
when, in the manufacture of some object, a means
has been found to produce parts of it mechanically,
the manufacture splits up immediately into two works
independent of each other.

Need we speak of the philanthropic and providential
aim that M. Proudhon discovers in the invention and
first application of machinery?

When in England the market had become so far de-
veloped that manual labour was no longer adequate,
the. need for machinery was felt. Then came the idea
of the application of mechanical science, already quite
developed in the eighteenth century.

The automatic workshop opened its career with acts
which were anything but philanthropic. Children were
kept at work at the whip’s end; they were made an
object of traffic and contracts were undertaken with
the orphanages. All the laws on the apprenticeship of
workers were repealed, because, to use M. Proudhon’s
phraseology, there was no further need of synthetic
workers. Finally, from 1825 onwards, almost all the
new inventions were the result of collisions between
the worker and the employer who sought at all costs
to depreciate the worker’s specialized ability. After
each new strike of any importance, there appeared a
new machine. So little indeed did the worker see in the
application of machinery a sort of rehabilitation, resto-
ration~s& M. Proudhon would say — that in the eight-
eenth century he stood out for a very long time
against the incipient domination of the automaton.

“Wyatt,” says Doctor Ure, “invented the series of
fluted rollers. . . (the spinning fingers usually ascribed
to Arkwright),... The main difficulty did not, to my
apprehension, lie so much in the invention of a proper

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

111

self-acting mechanism ... as in training human beings
to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to
identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of
the complex automaton. But to devise and administer
a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the
necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculean
enterprise, the noble achievement of Arkwright.” [I 21-
22, 23]

In short, by the introduction of machinery the divi-
sion of labour inside society has grown up, the task of
the worker inside the workshop has been simplified,
capital has been concentrated, human beings have
been further dismembered.

When M. Proudhon wants to be an economist, and
to abandon for a moment the “evolution of ideas in
serial relation in the understanding,” then he goes
and draws erudition from Adam Smith, from a time
when the automatic workshop was only just coming
into existence. Indeed, what a difference -between the
division of labour as it existed in Adam Smith’s day
and as we see it in the automatic workshop! In order
to make this properly understood, we need only quote
a few passages from Dr. Ure’s The Philosophy of
Manufactures.

“When Adam Smith wrote his immortal elements of
economics, automatic machinery being hardly known,
he was properly led to regard the division of labour
as the grand principle of manufacturing improvement;
and he showed, in the example of pin-making, how
each handicraftsman, being thereby enabled to perfect
himself by practice in one point, became a quicker and
cheaper workman. In each branch of manufacture he
saw that some parts were, on that principle, of easy
execution, like the cutting of pin wires into uniform
lengths, and some were comparatively difficult, like
the formation and fixation of their heads; and there-
fore he concluded that to each a workman of appro-

142

KARL MARX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

priate value and cost was naturally assigned. This
appropriation forms the very essence of the division
of labour. . . . But what was in Dr. Smith’s time a topic
of useful illustration, cannot now be used without risk
of misleading the public mind as to the right principle
of manufacturing industry. In fact, the division, or
rather adaptation of labour to the different talents of
men, is little thought of in factory employment. On
the contrary, wherever a process requires peculiar
dexterity and steadiness of hand, it is withdrawn as
soon as possible from the cunning workman, who is
prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed
in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating,
that a child may superintend it.

■ “The principle of the factory system then is, to
substitute mechanical science for hand skill, and the
partition of a process into its essential constituents,
for the division or gradation of labour among artisans.
On the handicraft plan, labour more or less skilled,
was usually the most expensive element of produc-
tion ... but on the automatic plan, skilled labour gets
progressively superseded, and will, eventually, be re-
placed by mere overlookers of machines.

“By the infirmity of human nature it happens, that
the more skilful the workman, the more self-willed and
intractable he is apt to become, and, of course, the
less fit a component of a mechanical system, in which,
by occasional irregularities, he may do great damage
to the whole. The grand object therefore of the modern
manufacture is, through the union of capital and
science, to reduce the task of his workpeople to the
qxercise of vigilance and dexterity, — faculties, when
concentrated to one process, speedily brought to per-
fection in the young.

“On the gradation system, a man must serve an
apprenticeship of many years before his hand and eye
become skilled enough for certain mechanical feats;

THE METAJPHrVSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

143

but on the system of decomposing- a process into its
constituents, and embodying each part in an autom-
atic machine, a person of common care and capacity
may be entrusted -with any of the said elementary parts
after a short probation, and may be transferred from
one to another, on any emergency, at the discretion
of the master. Such translations are utterly at variance
with the old practice of the division of labour, which
fixed one man to shaping the head of a pin, and an-
other to sharpening its point, with most irksome and

spirit-wasting uniformity, for a whole life But on

the equalization plan of self-acting machines, the oper-
ative needs to call his- faculties only into agreeable
exercise. ... As his business consists in tending the
work of a well-regulated mechanism, he- can learn it
in a short period; and when he transfers his services
from one machine to another, he varies his task, and
enlarges his views, by thinking on those general com-
binations which r€sult from his and his companions’
labours. Thus, that cramping of the faculties, that nar-
rowing of the mind, that stunting of the frame, which
were ascribed, and not unjustly, by moral writers, to
the division of labour, cannot, in common circum-
stances, occur under the equable distribution of in-
dustry

“It is, in fact, the constant aim and tendency of every
improvement in machinery to supersede human labour
altogether, or to diminish its cost, by substituting the;
industry of women and children for that of men; or

that of ordinary labourers for framed artisans This

tendency to employ merely children with watchful eyes
and nimble fingers, instead of journeymen of long ex-
perience, shows how the scholastic dogma of the di-
vision of labour into degrees of skill has been explod-
ed by our enlightened manufacturers.” (Andre Ure,
Philosophie des manufactures ou Bconomie industri-
elle, Vol. I, Chap. 1 [pp. 34-35].)

144

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

What characterizes the division of labour inside
modern society is that it engenders specialized func-
tions, specialists, and with them craft-idiocy.

“We are struck with admiration,” says Lemontey,
“when we see among the Ancients the same person dis-
tinguishing himself to a high degree as philosopher,
poet, orator, historian, priest, administrator, general
of an army. Our souls are appalled at the sight of so
vast a domain. Each one of us plants his hedge and
shuts himself up in his enclosure. I do not know wheth-
er by this parcellation the field is enlarged, but I do
know that man is belittled.”

What characterizes the division of labour in the au-
tomatic workshop is that labour has there completely
lost its specialized character. But the moment every
special development stops, the need for universality,
the tendency towards an integral development of the
individual begins to be felt. The automatic workshop
wipes out specialists and craft-idiocy.

M. Proudhon, not having understood even this one
revolutionary side of the automatic workshop, takes a
step backward and proposes to the worker that he
make not only the twelfth part of a pin, but successively
all twelve parts of it. The worker would thus arrive
at the knowledge and the consciousness of the pin.
This is M. Proudhon’s synthetic labour. Nobody will con-
test that to make a movement forward and another move-
ment backward is also to make a synthetic movement.

To sum up, M. Proudhon has not gone further than
the petty-bourgeois ideal. And to realize this ideal, he
can think of nothing better than to take us back to the
journeyman or, at most, to the master craftsman of
the Middle Ages. It is enough, he says somewhere in
his book, to have created a masterpiece once in one’s
life, to have felt oneself Just once to be a man. Is not
this, in form as in content, the masterpiece demanded
by the trade guild of the Middle Ages?

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

146

§ 3. COMPETITION AND MONOPOLY

Good side of
competition

Bad side of
competition

General reflection ]

I

Problem to be solved

1

“Competition is as essential
to labour as division. ... It is
necessary for the advent of
equality.” [I 186, 188]

“The principle is the negation
of itself. Its most certain result
is to ruin those whom it drags
in its train.” [I 185]

“The drawbacks which follow
in its wake, just as the good it
provides . . . both flow logically
from the principle.” [I 185-186]

“To seek the principle of
accommodation, which must be
derived from a law superior to
liberty itself.” [I 185]

Variant

“There can, therefore, be no
question here of destroying
competition, a thing as impos-
sible to destroy as liberty; we
have only to find its equilibri-
um, I would be ready to say its
police,” [I 223]

M. Proudhon begins by defending the eternal necess-
ity of competition against those who wish to replace it
by emulation.*

There is no “purposeless emulation,” and as “the
object of every passion is necessarily analogous to the
passion itself — a woman for the lover, power for the

* The Fourierists. [Note by Engels to the German edition of
188S.]

146

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

ambitious, gold for the raiser, a garland for the poet
— the object of industrial emulation is necessarily
profit. Emulation is nothing but competition itself.”
[I 187]

Competition is emulation with a view to profit. Is
industrial emulation necessarily emulation with a view
to profit, that is, competition? M. Proudhon proves it
by affirming it. We have seen that, for him, to affirm
is to prove, just as to suppose is to deny.

If the immediate object of the lover is the woman,
the immediate object of industrial emulation is the
product and not the profit.

Competition is not industrial emulation, it is com-
mercial emulation. In our time industrial emulation
exists only in view of commerce. There are even phases
in the economic life of modern nations when every-
body is seized with a sort of craze for making profit
without producing. This speculation craze, which recurs
periodically, lays bare the true character of competition,
which seeks to escape the need for industrial emulation.

If you had told an artisan of the fourteenth century
that the privileges and the whole feudal organization of
industry were going to be abrogated in favour of in-
dustrial emulation, called competition, he would have
replied that the privileges of the various corporations,
guilds and fraternities were organized competition.
M. Proudhon does not improve upon this when he af-
firms that “emulation is nothing but competition it-
self.”

“Decree that from the first of January, 1847, labour
and wages shall be guaranteed to everybody: immedi-
ately an immense relaxation will succeed the high ten-
sion of industry.” [I 189]

Instead of a supposition, an affirmation and a nega-
tion, we have now a decree that M. Proudhon issues
purposely to prove the necessity of- competition, its
eternity as a category, etc.

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

147

If we imagine that decrees are all that is needed to
get away from competition, we shall never get away
from it. And if we go so far as to propose to abolish
competition while retaining wages, we shall be propos-
ing nonsense by royal decree. But nations do not pro-
ceed by royal decree. Before framing such ordinances,
they must at least have changed from top to bottom
the conditions of their industrial and political exist-
ence, and consequently their whole manner of being.

M. Proudhon will reply, with his imperturbable as-
surance, that it is the hypothesis of “a transformation
of our nature without historical antecedents,” and that
he would be right in ''excluding us from the discus-
sion,” we know not in virtue of which ordinance.

M. Proudhon does not know that all history is noth-
ing but a continuous transformation of human nature.

“Let us stick to the facts. The French Revolution
was made for industrial liberty as much as for polit-
ical liberty; and although France, in 1789, had not
perceived — let us say it openly — all the consequences
of the principle whose realization it demanded, it was
mistaken neither in its wishes nor in its expectations.
Whoever attempts to deny this loses, in my view, the
right to criticism. I will never dispute with an ad-
versary who puts as principle the spontaneous error
of twenty-five million men. . . . Why then, if competition
had not been a principle of social economy, a decree
of fate, a necessity of the human soul, why, instead of
abolishing corporations, guilds and brotherhoods, did
nobody think rather of repairing the whole?” [I 191, 192]

So, since the French of the eighteenth century abol-
ished corporations, guilds and fraternities instead of mo-
difying them, the French of the nineteenth century must
modify competition instead of abolishing it. Since com-
petition was established in France in the eighteenth
century as a result of historical needs, this competition
must not be destroyed in the nineteenth century liecause
10 *

148

KARL MABX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

of other historical needs. M. Proudhon, not understand-
ing that the establishment of competition was bound
up with the actual development of the men of the
eighteenth century, makes of competition a necessity
of the human soul, in partibus infidelium.^^ What would
he have made of the great Colbert for the seventeenth
century?

After the revolution comes the present state of af-
fairs. M. Proudhon equally draws facts from it to show
the eternity of competition, by proving that all indus-
tries in which this category is not yet sufficiently de-
veloped, as in agriculture, are in a state of inferiority
and decrepitude.

To say that there are industries which have not yet
reached the stage of competition, that others again are
below the level of bourgeois production, is drivel which
gives not the slightest proof of the eternity of competi-
tion.

All M. Proudhon’s logic amounts to this: competition
is a social relation in which we are now developing
our productive forces. To this truth, he gives no logical
development, but only forms, often very well developed,
when he says that competition is industrial emula-
tion, the present-day mode of freedom, responsibility in
labour, constitution of value, a condition for the advent
of equality, a principle of social economy, a decree of
fate, a necessity of the human soul, an inspiration of
eternal justice, liberty in division, division in liberty,
an economic category.

“Competilion and association support each other. Far
from excluding each other they are not even divergent.
Whoever says competition already supposes a com-
mon aim. Competition is therefore not egoism, and the
most deplorable error committed by socialism is to
have regarded it as the overthrow of society.” [I 223]

Whoever says competition says common aim, and
that proves, on the one hand, that competition is as-

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

149

sociation; on the other, that competition is not egoism.
And whoever says egoism, does he not say common
aim? Every egoism operates in society and by the fact
of society. Hence it presupposes society, that is to say,
common aims, common needs, common means of pro-
duction, etc., etc. Is it, then, by mere chance that the
competition and association which the Socialists talk
about are not even divergent?

Socialists know well enough that present-day society
is founded on competition. How could they accuse com-
petition of overthrowing present-day society which they
want to overthrow themselves? And how could they
accuse competition of overthrowing the society to come,
in which they see, on the contrary, the overthrow of
competition?

M. Proudhon says, later on, that competition is the
opposite of monopoly, and consequently cannot be the
opposite of association.

Feudalism was, from its origin, opposed to patriar-
chal monarchy; it was thus not opposed to competi-
tion, which was not yet in existence. Does it follow
that competition is not opposed to feudalism?

In actual fact, society, association are denominations
which can be given to every society, to feudal society
as well as to bourgeois society, which is association
founded on competition. How then can there be Social-
ists, who, by the single word association, think they
can refute competition? And how can M. Proudhon
himself wish to defend competition against socialism by
describing competition by the single word association!

All we have Just said makes up the beautiful side of
competition as M. Proudhon sees it. Now let us pass on
to the ugly side, that is the negative side, of competition,
its drawbacks, its destructive, subversive elements, its
injurious qualities.

There is something dismal about the picture M. Prou-
dhon draws of it.

150

KABL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

Competition engenders misery, it foments civil war,
it “changes natural zones,” mixes up nationalities,
causes trouble in families, corrupts the public con-
science, “subverts the notion of equity, of justice,” of
morality, and what is worse, it destroys free, honest
trade, and does not even give in exchange synthetic
value, fixed, honest price. It disillusions everyone, even
economists. It pushes things so far as to destroy its
very self.

After all the ill M. Proudhon says of it, can there be
for the relations of bourgeois society, for its principles
and its illusions, a more disintegrating, more destruc-
tive element than competition?

It must be carefully noted that competition always
becomes the more destructive for bourgeois relations
in proportion as it urges on a feverish creation of new
productive forces, that is, of the material conditions
of a new society. In this respect at least, the bad side
of competition would have its good points.

“Competition as an economic position or phase, con-
sidered in its origin, is the necessary result ... of the
theory of the reduction of general expenses.” [I 235]

For M. Proudhon, the circulation of the blood must
be a consequence of Harvey’s theory.

“Monopoly is the inevitable end of competition,
which engenders it by a continual negation of itself.
This generation of monopoly is in itself a justification
of it Monopoly is the natural opposite of compe-

tition . . . but as soon as competition is necessary, it
implies the idea of monopoly, since monopoly is, as
it were, the seat of each competing individuality.”
[I 236, 237]

We rejoice with M. Proudhon that he can for once
at least properly apply his formula to thesis and anti-
thesis. Everyone knows that modern monopoly is en-
gendered by competition itself.

As for the content, M. Proudhon .clings to poetic

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

■161

images. Competition made “of every subdivision ol
labour a sort of sovereignty in which each individual
stood with his power and his independence.” Monopo-
ly is “the seat of every competing individuality.” The
sovereignty is worth at least as much as the seat.

M. Proudhon talks of nothing but modern monopoly
engendered by competition. But we all know that com-
petition was engendered by feudal monopoly. Thus
competition was originally the opposite of monopoly
and not monopoly the opposite of competition. So that
modern monopoly is not a simple antithesis, it is on
the contrary the true synthesis.

Thesis: Feudal monopoly, before competition.

Antithesis: Competition.

Synthesis: Modern monopoly, which is the negation
of feudal monopoly, in so far as it implies the system
of competition, and the negation of competition in so
far as it is monopoly.

Thus modern monopoly, bourgeois monopoly, is syn-
thetic monopoly, the negation of the negation, the uni-
ty of opposites. It is monopoly in the pure, normal, ra-
tional state.

M. Proudhon is in contradiction with his own phil-
osophy when he turns bourgeois monopoly into mo-
nopoly in the crude, primitive, contradictory, spasmod-
ic state. M. Rossi, whom M. Proudhon quotes sever-
al times on the subject of monopoly, seems to have a
better grasp of the synthetic character of bourgeois
monopoly. In his Cours d’economie politique , he dis-
tinguishes between artificial monopolies and natural
monopolies. Feudal monopolies, he -says, are artificial,
that is, arbitrary; bourgeois monopolies are natural,
that isj rational.

Monopoly is a good thing, reasons M. Proudhon,
since it is an economic category, an emanation “from
the impersonal reason of humanity.” Competition,
again, is a good thing since.it also is an economic ca-

152

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

tegiory. But what is not good is the reality of monopoly
and the reality of competition. What is still worse is
that competition and monopoly devour each other. What
is to be done? Look for the synthesis of these two eter-
nal thoughts, wrest it from the bosom of God, where it
has been deposited from time immemorial.

In practical life we find not only competition, monop-
oly and the antagonism between them, but also the
synthesis of the two, which is not a formula, but a
movement. Monopoly produces competition, competi-
tion produces monopoly. Monopolists are made from
competition; competitors become monopolists. If the
monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means
of partial associations, competition increases among
the workers; and the more the mass of the proleta-
rians grows as against the monopolists of one nation,
the more desperate competition becomes between the
monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is of such
a character that monopoly can only maintain itself by
continually entering into the struggle of competition

To make the dialectical transition to the taxes which
come after monopoly, M. Proudhon talks to us about
the social genius which, after zigzagging intrepidly
onward, “after striding with a jaunty step, without re-
penting and without halting, reaches the earner of mo-
nopoly, casts backward a melancholy glance, and, after
profound reflection, assails all the objects of produc-
tion with taxes, and creates a whole administrative or-
ganization, in order that all employments be given to
the proletariat and paid by the men of monopoly.”
[I 284, 285]

What can we say of this genius, which, while fasting,
walks about in a zigzag? And what can we say of this
■walking which has no other object in view than that of
destroying the bourgeois by taxes, whereas taxes are
the very means of giving the bourgeois the wherewith-
al to preserve themselves as the ruling class?

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

153

Merely to give a glimpse of the manner in which
M. Proudhon treats economic details, it suffices to say
that, according to him, the tax on consumption was
established with a view to equality, and to relieve the
proletariat.

The tax on consumption has assumed its true devel-
opment only since the rise of the bourgeoisie. In the
hands of industrial capital, that is, of sober and eco-
nomical wealth, which maintains, reproduces and in-
creases itself by the direct exploitation of labour, the tax
on consumption was a means of exploiting the frivol-
ous, gay, prodigal wealth of the fine lords who did
nothing but consume. James Steuart clearly developed
this original purpose of the tax on consumption in his
Recherches des principes de I’economie politique,*^ which
he published ten years before Adam Smith.

“Under the pure monarchy, the prince seems jealous,
as it were, of growing wealth, and therefore imposes
taxes upon people who are growing richer. Under the
limited government they are calculated chiefly to affect
those who from rich are growing poorer. Thus the mon-
arch imposes a tax upon industry, where every one is
rated in proportion to the gain he is supposed to make
by his profession. The poll-tax and taille are likewise
proportioned to the supposed opulence of every one lia-
ble to them. ... In limited governments, impositions are
more generally laid upon consumption.” [II 190-191]

As for the logical sequence of taxes, of the balance
of trade, of credit — in the understanding of M. Prou-
dhon — we would only remark that the English bourgeoi-
sie, on attaining its political constitution under William
of Orange, created all at once a new system of taxes,
public credit and the system of protective duties, as
soon as it was in a position freely to develop its condi-
tions of existence.

This brief summary will suffice to give the reader a
true idea of M. Proudhon’s lucubrations on the police

164

KAKL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

or on taxes, the balance of trade, credit, communism
and population. We defy the most indulgent criticism
to treat these chapters seriously.

§ 4. PROPERTY OR GROUND RENT

In each historical epoch, property has developed dif-
ferently and under a set of entirely different social re-
lations. Thus to de ne bourgeois property is nothing
else than to give an exposition of all the social rela-
tions of bourgeois production.

To try to give a definition of property as of an inde-
pendent relation, a category apart, an abstract and
eternal idea, can be nothing but an illusion of meta-
physics or jurisprudence.

M. Proudhon, while seeming to speak of property in
general, deals only with landed property, with ground
rent.

“The origin of rent, as property, is, so to speak, extra-
economic: it rests in psychological and moral consider-
ations which are only very distantly connected with
the production of wealth.” (Vol. II, p. 265.) '

So M. Proudhon declares himself incapable of under-
standing the economic origin of rent and of property.
He admits that this incapacity obliges him to resort to
psychological and moral considerations, which, in-
deed, while only distantly connected with the produc-
tion of wealth, have yet a very close connection with
the narrowness of his historical views. M. Proudhon
affirms that there is something mystical and mysterious
about the origin of property. Now, to see mystery in the
origin of property — that is, to make a mystery of the
relation between production itself and the distribution
of the instruments of production — is not this, to use
M. Proudhon’s language, a renunciation of all claims
to economic science?

M. Proudhon “confines himself to recalling that at the

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

155

seventh epoch of economic evolution — credit — when
fiction had caused reality to vanish, and human activity
threatened to lose itself in empty space, it had become
necessary to bind man more closely to nature. Now, rent
was the price of this new contract.” (Vol. II, p. 269.)

L’homme aux qiiarante ecus‘^' foresaw a M. Proudhon
of the future: “Mr. Creator, by your leave: everyone is
master in his own world; but you will never make me
believe that the one we live in is made of glass.” In your
world, where credit was a means of losing oneself in
empty space, it is very possible that property became
necessary in order to bind man to nature. In the world
of real production, where landed property always
precedes credit, M. Proudhon’s horror vacui could not
exist.

The existence of rent once admitted, whatever its
origin, it becomes a subject of mutually antagonistic
negotiations between the farmer and the landed propri-
etor. What is the ultimate result of these negotiations, in
other words, what is the average amount of rent? This
is what M. Proudhon says:

“Ricardo’s theory answers this question. In the begin-
nings of society, when man, new to earth, had before
him nothing but huge forests, when the earth was vast
and when industry was beginning to come to life, rent
must have been nil. Land, as yet unformed by labour,
was an object of utility; it was not an exchange value,
it was common, not social. Little by little, the multipli-
cation of families and the progress of agriculture caused
the price of land to make itself felt. Labour came to give
the soil its worth: from this, rent came into being. The
more fruit a field yielded with the same amount of
labour, the higher it was valued; hence the tendency of
proprietors was always to arrogate to themselves the
whole amount of the fruits of the soil, less the wages of
the farmer — that is, less the costs of production. Thus
property followed on the heels of labour to take from it

156

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHK,OSOPHY

all the product that exceeded the actual expenses. As
the proprietor fulfils a mystic duty and represents the
community as against the colonus, the farmer is, by the
dispensation of Providence, no more than a responsible
labourer, who must account to society for all he reaps
above his legitimate wage. ... In essence and by desti-
nation, then, rent is an instrument of distributive justice,
one of the thousand means that the genius of econo-
my employs to attain to equality. It is an immense land
valuation which is carried out contradictorily by land-
owners and farmers, without any possible collusion, in
a higher interest, and whose ultimate result must be to
equalize the possession of the land between the exploi-
ters of the soil and the industrialists. ... It needed no
less than this magic of property to snatch from the
colonus the surplus of his product which he cannot help
regarding as his own and of which he considers himself
to be exclusively the author. Rent, or rather property,
has broken down agricultural egoism and created a so-
lidarity that no power, no partition of the land could
have brought into being The moral effect of prop-

erty having been secured, at present what remains to
be done is to distribute the rent.” [II 270-272]

All this tumult of words may be reduced firstly to
this; Ricardo says that the excess of the price of agri-
cultural products over their cost of production, includ-
ing the ordinary profit and interest on the capital, gives
the measure of the rent. M. Proudhon does better. He
makes the landowner intervene, like a Deus ex ma-
china,'^^ and snatch from the colonus all the surplus of
his production over the cost of production. He makes use
of the intervention of the landowner to explain property,
of the intervention of the rent-receiver to explain rent.
He answers the problem by formulating the same prob-
lem and adding an extra syllable.^®

Let us note also that in determining rent by the dif-
ference in fertility of the soil, M. Proudhon assigns a

THE METAPHYSICS CP POLITICAL ECONOMY

157

new origin to it, since land, before being assessed ac-
cording to different degrees of fertility, “was not,” in his
view, “‘an exchange value, but was common.” What,
then, has happened to the fiction about rent having come
into being through the necessity of bringing back to the
land man who was about to lose himself in the inanity
of empty space?

Now let us free Ricardo’s doctrine from the providen-
tial, allegorical and mystical phrases in which M. Prou-
dhon has been careful to wrap it.

Rent, in the Ricardian sense, is property in land in
its bourgeois state; that is, feudal property which has
become subject to the conditions of bourgeois produc-
tion.

We have seen that, according to the Ricardian doc-
trine, the price of all objects is determined ultimately by
the cost of production, including the industrial profit; in
other words, by the labour time employed. In manufac-
turing industry, the price of the product obtained by the
minimum of labour regulates the price of all other
commodities of the same kind, seeing that the cheapest
and most productive instruments of production can be
multiplied to infinity and that competition necessarily
gives rise to a market price, that is, a common price for
all products of the same kind.

In agricultural industry, on the contrary, it is the
price of the product obtained by the greatest amount of
labour which regulates the price of all products of the
same kind. In the first place, one cannot, as in manu-
facturing industry, multiply at will the instruments of
production possessing the same degree of productivity,
that is, plots of land with the same degree of fertility.
Then, as population increases, land of an inferior quality
begins to be exploited, or new outlays of capital, propor-
tionately less productive than before, are made upon the
same plot of land. In both cases a greater amount of
labour is expended to obtain a proportionately smaller

158

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

product. The needs of the population having rendered
necessary this increase of labour, the product of the
land whose exploitation is the more costly has as certain
a sale as has that of a piece of land whose exploitation
is cheaper. As competition levels the market price, the
product of the better soil will be paid for as dearly as
that of the inferior. It is the excess of the price of the
products of the better soil over the cost of their produc-
tion that constitutes rent. If one could always have at
one’s disposal plots of land of the same degree of fer-
tility; if one could, as in manufacturing industry, have
recourse continually to cheaper and more productive
machines, or if the subsequent outlays of capital pro-
duced as much as the first, then the price of agricultural
products would be determined by the price of commod-
ities produced by the best instruments of production, as
we have seen with the price of manufactured products.
But, from this moment rent would have disappeared
also.

For the Ricardian doctrine^'* to be generally true, it is
essential that capital should be freely applicable to dif-
ferent branches of industry; that a strongly developed
competition among capitalists should have brought
profits to an equal level; that the farmer should be no
more than an industrial capitalist claiming for the use
of his capital on inferior land,'*® a profit equal to that
w'hich he would draw from his capital if it were applied
in any kind of manufacture; that agricultural exploita-
tion should be subjected to the regime of large-scale in-
dustry; and finally, that the landowner himself should
aim at nothing beyond the money return.

It may happen, as in Ireland, that rent does not yet
exist, although the letting of land has reached an
extreme development there. Rent being the excess not
only over wages, but also over industrial profit, it can-
not exist where the landowner’s revenue is nothing but
a mere levy on wages.

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

159

Thus, far from converting the exploiter of the land,
the farmer, into a simple labourer, and “snatching from
the cultivator the surplus of his product, which he can-
not help regarding as his own,” rent confronts the land-
owner, not with the slave, the serf, the payer of trib-
ute, the wage labourer, but with the industrial capi-
talist.^®

Once constituted as ground rent, ground property has
in its possession only the surplus over production costs,
which are determined not only by wages but also by
industrial profit. It is therefore from the landowner
that ground rent snatched a part of his income. Thus,
there was a big lapse of time before the feudal farmer
was replaced by the industrial capitalist. In Germany,
for example, this transformation began only in the last
third of the eighteenth century. It is in England alone
that this relation between the industrial capitalist and
the landed proprietor has been fully developed.

So long as there was only M. Proudhon’s colonus,
there was no rent. The moment rent exists, the colonus
is no longer the farmer, but the worker, the farmer’s
colonus. The abasement of the labourer, reduced to the
role of a simple worker, day labourer, wage-earner,
working for the industrial capitalist; the intervention of
the industrial capitalist, exploiting the land like any
other factory; the transformation of the landed proprie-
tor from a petty sovereign into a vulgar usurer; these
are the different relations expressed by rent.

Rent, in the Ricardian sense, is patriarchal agricul-
ture transformed into commercial industry, industrial
capital applied to land, the town bourgeoisie trans-
planted into the country. Rent, instead of binding man
to nature, has merely bound the exploitation of the land
to competition. Once established as rent, landed prop-
erty itself is the result of competition, since from that
time onwards it depends on the market value of agricul-
tural produce. As rent, landed property is mobilized

160

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

and becomes an article of commerce. Rent is possible
only from the moment when the development of urban
industry, and the social organization resulting there-
from, force the landowner to aim solely at cash profits,
at the monetary relation of his agricultural products —
in fact to look upon his landed property only as a
machine for coining money. Rent has so completely di-
vorced the landed proprietor from the soil, from nature,
that he has no need even to know his estates, as is to
be seen in England. As for the farmer, the industrial
capitalist and the agricultural worker, they are no
more bound to the land they exploit than are the em-
ployer and the worker in the factories to the cotton and
wool they manufacture; they feel an attachment only
for the price of their production, the monetary product.
Hence the Jeremiads of the reactionary parties, who offer
up all their prayers for the return of feudalism, of the
good old patriarchal life, of the simple manners and the
fine virtues of our forefathers. The subjection of the soil
to the laws which dominate all other industries is and
always will be the subject of interested condolences.
Thus it may be said that rent has become the motive
power which has introduced idyll into the movement of
history.

Ricardo, after postulating bourgeois production as
necessary for determining rent, applies the conception
of rent, nevertheless, to the landed property of all ages
and all countries. This is an error common to all the
economists, who represent the bourgeois relations of
production as eternal categories.

From the providential aim of rent— which is, for
M. Proudhon, the transformation of the colonus into a
responsible worker, he passes to the equalized reward
of rent.

. Rent, as we have just seen, is constituted by the
equal price of the products of lands of unequal fertil-
ity, so that a hectolitre of corn which has cost ten francs

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

161

is sold for twenty francs if the cost of production rises
to twenty francs upon soil of inferior quality.

So long as necessity forces the purchase of all the
agricultural products brought into the market, the mar-
ket price is determined by the cost of the most expen-
sive product. Thus it is this equalization of price, result-
ing from competition and not from the different fertili-
ties of the lands, that secures to the owner of the better
soil a rent of ten francs for every hectolitre that his
tenant sells.

Let us suppose for a moment that the price of corn is
determined by the labour-time needed to produce it, and
at once the hectolitre of corn obtained from the better
soil will sell at ten francs, while the hectolitre of corn
obtained on the inferior soil will cost twenty francs. This
being admitted, the average market price will be fifteen
francs, whereas, according to the law of competition, it
is twenty Trancs. If the average price were fifteen francs,
there would be no occasion for any distribution, whether
equalized or otherwise, for there would be no rent. Rent
exists only when one can sell for twenty francs the
hectolitre of corn which has cost the producer ten francs.
M. Proudhon supposes equality of the market price,
with unequal costs of production in order to arrive
at an equalized sharing out of the product of ine-
quality.

We understand such economists as Mill, Cherbuliez,
Hilditch and others demanding that rent should be
handed over to the state to serve in place of taxes. That
is a frank expression of the hatred the industrial capi-
talist bears towards the landed proprietor, who seems
to him a useless thing, an excrescence upon the general
body of bourgeois production.

But first to make the price of the hectolitre of corn
twenty francs in order then to make a general distribu-
tion of the ten francs overcharge levied on the consum-
er, is indeed enough to make the social genius pursue
11—1464

162

KAKL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

its zigzag course mournfully — and knock its head
against some corner.

Rent becomes, under M. Proudhon’s pen, “an immense
land valuation which is carried out contradictorily by
landlords and farmers ... in a higher interest, and
whose ultimate result must be to equalize the possession
of land between exploiters of the soil and the industrial-
ists.” [II 271]

For any land valuation based upon rent to be of prac-
tical value, the conditions of present society must not
be departed from.

Now, we have shown that the farm- rent paid by the
farmer to the landlord expresses the rent with any exact-
itude only in the countries most advanced in industry
and commerce. And even this rent often includes inter-
est paid to the landlord on capital incorporated in the
land. The location of the land, the vicinity of towns, and
many other circumstances influence the farm rent and
modify the ground rent. These peremptory reasons
would be enough to prove the inaccuracy of a land
valuation based on rent.

On the other hand, rent could not be the invariable
index of the degree of fertility of a piece of land, since
every moment the modern application of chemistry is
changing the nature of the soil, and geological knowl-
edge is just now, in our days, beginning to revolutionize
all the old estimates of relative fertility. It is only about
twenty years since vast plots in the eastern counties of
England were cleared; they had been left uncultivated
from the lack of proper comprehension of the rela-
tion between the humus and the composition of the
sub-soil.

Thus history, far from supplying, in rent, a ready-
made land valuation, does nothing but change and turn
topsy-turvy the land valuations already made.

Finally, fertility is not so natural a quality as might
be thought; it is closely bound up with the social rela-

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

163

tions of the time. A piece of land may be very fertile for
corn growing, and yet the market price may decide the
cultivator to turn it into an artificial pastureland and
thus render it infertile.

M. Proudhon has improvised his land valuation,
which has not even the value of an ordinary land valua-
tion, only to give substance to the providentially
equalitarian aim of rent.

“Rent,” continues M. Proudhon, “is the interest paid
on a capital which never perishes, namely — land. And
as the capital is capable of no increase in matter, but
only of an indefinite improvement in its use, it comes
about that while the interest or profit on a loan {mutu-
um) tends to diminish continually through abundance
of capital, rent tends always to increase through the
perfecting of industry, from which results the improve-
ment in the use of the land. . . . Such, in its essence, is
rent.” (Vol. II, p. 265.)

This time, M. Proudhon sees in rent all the charac-
teristics of interest, save that it is derived from capital
of a specific nature. This capital is land, an eternal
capital, “which is capable of no increase in matter, but
only of an indefinite improvement in its use.” In the
progressive advance of civilization, interest has a con-
tinual tendency to fall, whilst rent continually tends to
rise. Interest falls because of the abundance of capital;
rent rises owing to the improvements brought about in
industry, which result in an ever better utilization of
land.

Such, in its essence, is the opinion of M. Proudhon.

Let us first examine how far it is true to say that rent
is interest on capital.

For the landed proprietor himself rent represents the
interest on the capital that the land has cost him, or that
he would draw from it if he sold it. But in buying or
selling land he only buys or sells rent. The price he
pays to make himself a receiver of rent is regulated by
11 *

164

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

the rate of interest in general and has nothing to do
with the actual nature of rent. The interest on capital
invested in land is in general lower than the interest on
capital invested in manufacture or commerce. Thus, for
those who make no distinction between the interest that
the land represents to the owner and the rent itself, the
interest on land capital diminishes still more than does
the interest on other capital. But it is not a question of
the purchase or sale price of rent, of the marketable
value of rent, of capitalized rent, it is a question of rent
itself.

Farm rent can imply again, apart from rent proper,
the interest on the capital incorporated in the land. In
this instance the landlord receives this part of the farm
rent, not as a landlord but as a capitalist; but this is
not the rent proper that we are to deal with.

Land, so long as it is not exploited as a means of
production, is not capital. Land as capital can be in-
creased just as much as all the other instruments of
production. Nothing is added to its matter, to use
M. Proudhon’s language, but the lands which serve as
instruments of production are multiplied. The very fact
of applying further outlays of capital to land already
transformed into means of production increases land as
capital without adding anything to land as matter, that
is, to the extent of the land. M. Proudhon’s land as mat-
ter is the earth in its limitation. As for the eternity he
attributes to land, we grant readily it has this virtue as
matter. Land as capital is no more eternal than any
other capital.

'Gold and silver, which yield interest, are just as last-
ing and eternal as land. If the price of gold and silver
falls, while that of land keeps rising, this is certainly
not because of its more or less eternal nature.

Land as capital is fixed capital; but fixed capital gets
used up just as much as circulating capital. Improve-
ments to the land need reproduction and upkeep; they

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

166

last only for a time; and this they have in common with
all other improvements used to transform matter into
means of production. If land as capital were eternal,
some lands would present a very different appearance
from what they do today, and we should see the Roman
Campagna, Sicily, Palestine, in all the splendour of
their former prosperity.

There are even instances when land as capital might
disappear, even though the improvements remain incor-
porated in the land.

In the first place, this occurs every time rent proper
is wiped out by the competition of new and more fertile
soils; secondly, the improvements which might have
been valuable at one time cease to be of value the mo-
ment they become universal owing to the development
of agronomy.

The representative of land as capital is not the land-
lord, but the farmer. The proceeds yielded by land as
capital are interest and industrial profit, not rent. There
are lands which yield such interest and profit but still
yield no rent.

Briefly, land in so far as it yields interest, is land
capital, and as land capital it yields no rent, it is not
landed property. Rent results from the social relations
in which the exploitation of the land takes place. It can-
not be a result of the more or less solid, more or less
durable nature of the soil. Rent is a product of society
and not of the soil.

According to M. Proudhon, “improvement in the use
of the land” — a consequence “of the perfecting of in-
dustry” — causes the continual rise in rent. On
the contrary, this improvement causes its periodical
fall.

Wherein consists, in general, any improvement,
whether in agriculture or in manufacture? In producing
more with the same labour; in producing as much, or
even more, with less labour. Thanks to these improve-

166

KABL MARX. THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

ments, the farmer is spared from using a greater
amount of labour for a relatively smaller product. He
has no need, therefore, to resort to inferior soils, and
instalments of capital applied successively to the same
soil remain equally productive.

Thus, these improvements, far from continually
raising rent as M. Proudhon says, become on the
contrary so many temporary obstacles preventing its
rise.

The English landowners of the seventeenth century
were so well aware of this truth, that they opposed the
progress of agriculture for fear of seeing their incomes
diminish. (See Petty, an English economist of the time
of Charles

§ 5. STRIKES AND COMBINATIONS OF WORKERS

“Every upward movement in wages can have no other
effect than a rise in the price of corn, wine, etc., that is,
the effect of a dearth. For what are wages? They are the
cost price of corn, etc.; they are the integrant price of
everything. We may go even further: wages are the
proportion of the elements composing wealth and con-
sumed reproductively every day by the mass of the
workers. Now, to double wages ... is to attribute to
each one of the producers a greater share than his prod-
uct, which is contradictory, and if the rise extends only
to a small number of industries, it brings about a gen-
eral disturbance in exchange; in a word, a dearth It

is impossible, I declare, for strikes followed by an in-
crease in wages not to culminate in a general rise in
prices: this is as certain as that two and two make
four.” (Proudhon, Vol. I, pp. 110 and 111.)

We deny all these assertions, except that two and
two make four.

In the first place, there is no general rise in prices.
If the price of everything doubles at the same time as

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

167

wages, there is no change in price, the only change is
in terms.

Then again, a general rise in wages can never pro-
duce a more or less general rise in the price of goods.
Actually, if every industry employed the same number
of workers in relation to fixed capital or to the instru-
ments used, a general rise in wages would produce a
general fall in profits and the current price of goods
would undergo no alteration.

But as the relation of manual labour to fixed capital
is not the same in different industries, all the industries
which employ a relatively greater mass of capital and
fewer workers, will be forced sooner or later to lower
the price of their goods. In the opposite case, in which
the price of their goods is not lowered, their profit will
rise above the common rate of profits. Machines are not
wage-earners. Therefore, the general rise in wages will
affect less those industries, which, compared with the
others, employ more machines than workers. But as
competition always tends to level the rate of profits,
those profits which rise above the average rate cannot
but be transitory. Thus, apart from a few fluctuations,
a general rise in wages will lead, not as M. Proudhon
says, to a general increase in prices, but to a partial
fall, that is a fall in the current price of the goods that
are made chiefly with the help of machines.

The rise and fall of profits and wages expresses
merely the proportion in which capitalists and workers
share in the product of a day’s work, without influencing
in most instances the price of the product. But that
“strikes followed by an increase in wages culminate in
a general rise in prices, in a dearth even” — these are
notions which can blossom only in the brain of a poet
who has not been understood.

In England, strikes have regularly given rise to the
invention and application of new machines. Machines
were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capi-

168

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

talists to quell the revolt of specialized labour. The self-
acting mule, the greatest invention of modern industry,
put out of action the spinners who were in revolt. If
combinations and strikes had no other effect than that
of making the efforts of mechanical genius react against
them, they would still exercise an immense influence on
the development of industry.

“I find,” continues M. Proudhon, '“in an article pub-
lished by M. Leon Faucher . . . September 1845, that for
some time the British workers have got out of the habit
of combination, which is assuredly a progress for which
one cannot but congratulate them: but this improvement
in the morale of the workers comes chiefly from their
economic education. ‘It is not on the manufacturers,’
cried a spinning-mill worker at a Bolton meeting, ‘that
wages depend. In periods of depression the masters are,
so to speak, merely the whip with which necessity arms
itself, and whether they want to or not, they have to
deal blows. The regulative principle is the relation of
supply to demand; and the masters have not this

power’ Well done!’’ cries M. Proudhon, “these are

well-trained workers, model workers, etc., etc., etc. Such
poverty did not exist in Britain; it will not cross the
Channel.” (Proudhon, Vol. I, pp. 261 and 262.)

Of all the towns in England, Bolton is the one in
which radicalism is the most developed. The Bolton
workers are known to be the most revolutionary of all.
At the time of the great agitation in England for the
abolition of the Corn Laws, the English manufacturers
thought that they could cope with the landowners only
by thrusting the workers to the fore. But as the interests
of the workers were no less opposed to those of the
manufacturers than the interests of the manufacturers
were to those of the landowners, it was natural that the
manufacturers should fare badly in the workers’ meet-
ings. What did the manufacturers do? To save appear-
ances they organized meetings composed, to a large

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

169

extent, of foremen, of the small number of workers who
were devoted to them, and of the real friends of trade.
When later on the genuine workers tried, as in Bolton
and Manchester, to take part in these sham demonstra-
tions, in order to protest against them, they were forbid-
den admittance on the ground that it was a ticket meet-
ing — a meeting to which only persons with entrance
cards were admitted. Yet the posters placarded on the
walls had announced public meetings. Every time one
of these meetings was held, the manufacturers’ news-
papers gave a pompous and detailed account of the
speeches made. It goes without saying that it was the
foremen who made these speeches. The London papers
reproduced them word for word. M. Proudhon has the
misfortune to take foremen for ordinary workers, and
enjoins them not to cross the Channel.

If in 1844 and 1845 strikes drew less attention than be-
fore, it was because 1844 and 1845 were the first two years
of prosperity that British industry had had since 1837.
Nevertheless none of the trades unions had been dissolved.

Now let us listen to the foremen of Bolton. According
to them manufacturers have no command over wages
because they have no command over the price of prod-
ucts, and they have no command over the price of
products because they have no command over the world
market. For this reason they wish it to be understood
that combinations should not be formed to extort an in-
crease in wages from the masters. M. Proudhon, on the
contrary, forbids combinations for fear they should be
followed by a rise in wages which would bring with it a
general dearth. We have no need to say that on one
point there is an entente cordiale between the foremen
and M. Proudhon: that a rise in wages is equivalent to
a rise in the price of products.

But is the fear of a dearth the true cause of M. Prou-
dhon’s rancour? No. Quite simply he is annoyed with the
Bolton foremen because they determine value by supply

170

KAHL MARX, THE POVERTY OP PHILOSOPHY

and demand and hardly take any account of constituted
value, of value which has passed into the state of con-
stitution, of the constitution of value, including perma-
nent exchangeability and all the other proportionalities
of relations and relations of proportionality, with Provi-
dence at their side.

“‘A workers’ strike is illegal, and it is not only the
Penal Code that says so, it is the economic system, the
necessity of the established order. . . . That each worker
individually should dispose freely over his person and
his hands, this can be tolerated, but that workers should
undertake by combination to do violence to monopoly, is
something society cannot permit.” (Vol. I, pp. 334 and
335.)

M. Proudhon wants to pass off an article of the Penal
Code as a necessary and general result of bourgeois
relations of production.

In England combination is authorized by an Act of
Parliament, and it is the economic system which has
forced Parliament to grant this legal authorization. In
1825, when, under the Minister Huskisson, Parliament
had to modify the law in order to bring it more and more
into line with the conditions resulting from free compe-
tition, it had of necessity to abolish all laws forbidding
combinations of workers. The more modern industry and
competition develop, the more elements there are which
call forth and strengthen combination, and as soon as
combination becomes an economic fact, daily gaining in
solidity, it is bound before long to become a legal fact.

Thus the article of the Penal Code proves at the most
that modern industry and competition were not yet well
developed under the Constituent Assembly and under
the Empire.'**

Economists and Socialists* are in agreement' on one

* That is, the Socialists of that time: the Fourierists in France,
the Owenites in England. {Note hy Engels to the German edition of
1885 .]

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

171

point: the condemnation of combinations. Only they
have different motives for their act of condemnation.

The economists say to the workers: Do not combine.
By combination you hinder the regular progress of in-
dustry, you prevent manufacturers from carrying out
their orders, you disturb trade and you precipitate the
invasion of machines which, by rendering your labour
in part useless, force you to accept a still lower wage.
Besides, whatever you do, your wages will always be
determined by the relation of hands demanded to hands
supplied, and it is an effort as ridiculous as it is danger-
ous for you to revolt against the eternal laws of politi-
cal economy.

The Socialists say to the workers: Do not combine,
because what will you gain by it anyway? A rise in
wages? The economists will prove to you quite clearly
that the few ha’pence you may gain by it for a few
moments if you succeed, will be followed by a permanent
fall. Skilled calculators will prove to you that it would
take you years merely to recover, through the increase
in your wages, the expenses incurred for the organi-
zation and upkeep of the combinations.

And we, as Socialists, tell you that, apart from the
money question, you will continue none the less to be
workers, and the masters will still continue to be the
masters, just as before. So no combination! No politics!
For is not entering into combination engaging in poli-
tics?

The economists want the workers to remain in society
as it is constituted and as it has been signed and sealed
by them in their manuals.

The Socialists want the workers to leave the old soci-
ety alone, the better to be able to enter the new society
which they have prepared for them with so much fore-
sight.

In spite of both of them, in spite of manuals and
utopias, combination has not ceased for an instant to go

172

KARL MARX, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

forward and grow with the development and growth of
modern industry. It has now reached such a stage, that
the degree to which combination has developed in any
country clearly marks the rank it occupies in the hier-
archy of the world market. England, whose industry has
attained the highest degree of development, has the big-
gest and best organized combinations.

In England they have not stopped at partial combi-
nations which have no other objective than a passing
strike, and which disappear with it. Permanent combi-
nations have been formed, trades unions, which serve as
ramparts for the workers ,in their struggles with the
employers. And at the present time all these local trades
unions find a rallying point in the National Association
of United Trades, the central committee of which is in
London, and which already numbers 80,000 members.
The organization of these strikes, combinations, and
trades unions went on simultaneously with the political
struggles of the workers, who now constitute a large
political party, under the name of Chartists.

The first attempts of workers to associate among them-
selves always take place in the form of combinations.

Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a
crowd of people unknown to one another. Competition
divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages,
this common interest which they have against their
boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance —
combination. Thus combination always has a double
aim, that of stopping competition among the workers,
so that they can carry on general competition with the
capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely the
maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated,
constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in
their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in
face of always united capital, the maintenance of the
association becomes more necessary to them than that
of wages. This is so true that English economists are

THE METAPHYSICS OP POLITICAL ECONOMY

173

amazed to see the workers sacrifice a good part of their
wages in favour of associations, which, in the eyes of
these economists, are established solely in favour of
wages. In this struggle — a veritable civil war — all the
elements necessary for a coming battle unite and
develop. Once it has reached this point, association
takes on a political character.

Economic conditions had first transformed the mass
of the people of the country into workers. The combina-
tion of capital has created for this mass a common
situation, common interests. This mass is thus already
a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the
struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases,
this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a
class for itself. The interests it defends become class
interests. But the struggle of class against class is a
political struggle.

In the bourgeoisie we have two phases to distinguish:
that in which it constituted itself as a class under the
regime of feudalism and absolute monarchy, and that
in which, already constituted as a class, it overthrew
feudalism and monarchy to make society into a bour-
geois society. The first of these phases was the longer
and necessitated the greater efforts. This too began by
partial combinations against the feudal lords.

Much research has been carried out to trace the dif-
ferent historical phases that the bourgeoisie has passed
through, from the commune up to its constitution as a
class.

But when it is a question of making a precise study
of strikes, combinations and other forms in which the
proletarians carry out before our eyes their organiza-
tion as a class, some are seized with real fear and
others display a transcendental disdain.

An oppressed class is the vital condition for every
society founded on the antagonism of classes. The
emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies neces-

174

KARL. MARX. THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

sarily the creation of a new society. For the oppressed
class to be able to emancipate itself it is necessary
that the productive powers already acquired and the
existing social relations should no longer be capable
of existing sjde by side. Of all the instruments of pro-
duction, the greatest productive power is the revolu-
tionary class itself. The organization of revolutionary
elements as a class supposes the existence of all the
productive forces which could be engendered in the
bosom of the old society.

Does this mean that after the fall of the old society
there will be a new class domination culminating in a
new political power? No.

The condition for the emancipation of the working
class is the abolition of every class, just as the condition
for the liberation of the third estate, of the bourgeois
order, was the abolition of all estates* and all orders.

The working class, in the course of its development,
will substitute for the old civil society an association
which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and
there will be no more political power properly so-called,
since political power is precisely the official expression
of antagonism in civil society.

Meanwhile the antagonism between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class,
a struggle which carried to its highest expression is a
total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a
society founded on the opposition of classes should
culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body
against body, as its final denouemenf?

* Estates here in the historical sense of the estates of feu-
dalism, estates with definite and limited privileges. The revolu-
tion of the bourgeoisie abolisihed the estates and their privileges.
Bourgeois society knows only classes. It was, therefore, abso-
lutely in contradiction with history to describe the proletariat
as the “foiurth estate.” [Note by F. Engels to the German edition,
1885 .-]

THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

176

Do not say that social movement excludes political
movement. There is never a political movement which
is not at the same time social.

It is only in an order of things in which there are no
more classes and class antagonisms that social evolu-
tions will cease to be political revolutions. Till then, on
the eve of every general reshuffling of society, the last
word of social science will always be:

''Le combat ou la mort; la lutte sanguinaire ou le
neant. C'est ainsi que la question est invinciblement
posee''

George Sand.^^

APPENDICES

MARX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

' Brussels, December 28, 1846

Dear Mr. Annenkov,

You would long ago have received my answer to your
letter of November 1 but for the fact that my bookseller
only sent me Monsieur Proudhon’s book, The Philosophy
of Poverty, last week. I have gone through it in two
days in order to be able to give you my opinion about
it at once. As I have read the book very hurriedly, I
cannot go into details but can only tell you the general
impression it has made on md. If you wish I could go
into details in a second letter.

I must frankly confess that I find the book on the
whole bad, and very bad. You yourself laugh in your
letter at the “patch of German philosophy” which
M. Proudhon parades in this formless and pretentious
work, but you suppose that the economic argument has
not been infected by the philosophic poison. I too am
very far from imputing the faults in the economic
argument to M. Proudhon’s philosophy. M. Proudhon
does not give us a false criticism of political economy
because he is the possessor of an absurd philosophic
theory, but he gives us an absurd philosophic theory
because he fails to understa:nd the social system of
today in its engrenement (concatenation), to use a
word which like much else M., Proudhon has borrowed
from Fourier.

Why does M. Proudhon talk' about God, about univer-
sal reason, about the impersonal reason of humanity
which never errs, which has always been equal to itself

12 *

180

MARX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

throughout all the ages and of which one need only
have the right consciousness in order to know the truth?
Why does he resort to feeble Hegelianism to give him-
self the appearance of a bold thinker?

He himself provides you with the clue to this enigma.
M. Proudhon sees in history a series of social develop-
ments; he finds progress realized in history; finally he
finds that men, as individuals, did not know what they
were doing and were mistaken about their own move-
ment, that is to say, their social development seems at
the first glance to be distinct, separate and independent
of their individual development. He cannot explain
these facts, and so he merely invents the hypothesis of
the universal reason revealing itself. Nothing is easier
than to invent mystical causes, that is to say, phrases
which lack common sense.

But when M. Proudhon admits that he understands
nothing about the historical development of humanity —
he admits this by using such high-sounding words as:
Universal Reason, God, etc. — is he not implicitly and
necessarily admitting that he is incapable of under-
standing economic development?

What is society, whatever its form may be? The prod-
uct of men’s reciprocal action. Are men free to choose
this or that form of society for themselves? By no
means. Assume a particular state of development in
the productive forces of man and you will get a par-
ticular form of commerce and consumption. Assume
particular stages of development in production, com-
merce and consumption and you will have a corre-
sponding social constitution, a corresponding organiza-
tion of the family, of orders or of classes, in a word, a
corresponding civil society. Assume a particular civil
society and you will get particular political conditions
which are only the official expression of civil society.
M. Proudhon will never understand this because he
thinks he is doing something great by appealing from

MABX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

181

the state to society — that is to say, from the official
resume of society to official society.

It is superfluous to add that men are not free to
choose their productive forces — which are the basis of
all their history — for every productive force is an ac-
quired force, the product of former activity. The pro-
ductive forces are therefore the result of practical
human energy; but this energy is itself conditioned by
the circumstances in which men find themselves, by the
productive forces already acquired, by the social form
which exists before they do, which they do not create,
which is the product of the preceding generation.
Because of this simple fact that every succeeding gen-
eration finds itself in possession of the productive
forces acquired by the previous generation, which serve
it as the raw material for new production, a coherence
arises in human history, a history of humanity takes
shape which is all the more a history of humanity as
the productive forces of man and therefore his social
relations have been more developed. Hence it necessari-
ly follows that the social history of men is never
anything but the history of their individual develop-
ment, whether they are conscious of it or not. Their
material relations are the basis of all their relations.
These material relations are only the necessary forms
in which their material and individual activity is
realized.

M. Proudhon mixes up ideas and things. Men never
relinquish what they have won, but this does not mean
that they never relinquish the social form in which they
have acquired certain productive forces. On the con-
trary, in order that they may not be deprived of the
result attained, and forfeit the fruits of civilization, they
are obliged, from the moment when the form of their
commerce no longer corresponds to the productive
forces acquired, to change all their traditional social
forms. I am using the word “‘commerce” here in its

182

MARX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

widest sense, as we use Verkehr in German. For
example: the privileges, the institution of guilds and
corporations, the regulatory regime of the Middle Ages,
were social relations that alone corresponded to the
acquired productive forces and to the social condition
which had previously existed and from which these
institutions had arisen. Under the protection of the
regime of corporations and regulations, capital was
accumulated, overseas trade was developed, colonies
were founded. But the fruits of this men would have
forfeited if they had tried to retain the forms under
whose shelter these fruits had ripened. Hence burst two
thunderclaps — the Revolutions of 1640 and 1688. All
the old economic forms, the social relations correspond-
ing to them, the political conditions which were the
official expression of the old civil society, were
destroyed in England. Thus the economic forms in
which men produce, consume, and exchange, are
transitory and historical. With the acquisition of new
productive faculties, men change their mode of produc-
tion and with the mode of production all the economic
relations which are merely the necessary relations of
this particular mode of production.

This is what iM. Proudhon has not understood and
still less demonstrated. M. Proudhon, incapable of
following the real movement of history, produces a
phantasmagoria which presumptuously claims to be
dialectical. He does not feel it necessary to speak of the
seventeenth, the eighteenth or the nineteenth century,
for his history proceeds in the misty realm of imagina-
tion and rises far above space and time. In short, it is
not history but old Hegelian junk, it is not profane
history — a history of man— but sacred history — a
history of ideas. From his point of view man is only
the instrument of which the idea or the eternal reason
rriakes use in order to unfold itself. The evolutions of
which M. Proudhon speaks are understood to be evolu-

MARX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

183

tions such as are accomplished within the mystic womb
of the absolute idea. If you tear the veil from this
mystical language, what it comes to is that M. Prou-
dhon is offering you the order in which economic
categories arrange themselves inside his own head. It
will not require great exertion on my part to prove to
you that it is the order of a very disorderly mind.

M. Proudhon begins his book with a dissertation on
value, which is his pet subject. I will not enter on an
examination of this dissertation today.

The series of economic evolutions of the eternal
reason begins with division of labour. To M. Proudhon
division of labour is a perfectly simple thing. But was
not the caste regime also a particular division of
labour? Was not the regime of the corporations another
division of labour? And is not the division of labour
under the system of manufacture, which in England
begins about the middle of the seventeenth century and
comes to an end in the last part of the eighteenth, also
totally different from the division of labour in large-
scale modern industry?

M. Proudhon is so far from the truth that he neglects
what even the profane economists attend to. When he
talks about division of labour he does not feel it neces-
sary to mention the world market. Good. Yet must not
the division of labour in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, when there were still no colonies, when
America did not as yet exist for Europe, and Eastern
Asia only existed for her through the medium of
Constantinople, have been fundamentally different
from what it was in the seventeenth century when
colonies were already developed?

And that is not all. Is the whole inner organization of
nations, are all their international relations anything
else than the expression of a particular division of
labour? And must not these change when the division
of labour changes?

184

MABX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

M. Proudhon has so little understood the problem of
the division of labour that he never even mentions the
separation of town and country, which took place in
Germany, for instance, from the ninth to the twelfth
century. Thus, to M. Proudhon, this separation is an
eternal law since he knows neither its origin nor its
development. All through his book he speaks as if this
creation of a particular mode of production would
endure until the end of time. All that M. Proudhon says
about the division of labour is only a summary, and
moreover a very superficial and incomplete summary,
of what Adam Smith and a thousand others have said
before him.

The second evolution is machinery. The connection
between the division of labour and machinery is
entirely mystical to M. Proudhon. Each kind of division
of labour had its specific instruments of production. Be-
tween the middle of the seventeenth and the middle of
the eighteenth century, for instance, people did not
make everything by hand. There were machines, and
very complicated ones, such as looms, ships, levers, etc.

Thus there is nothing more absurd than to derive
machinery from division of labour in general.

I may also remark, by the way, that just as M. Prou-
dhon has not understood the origin of machinery, he
has still less understood its development. One can say
that up to the year 1825 — the period of the first general
crisis — the demands of consumption in general in-
creased more rapidly than production, and the develop-
ment of machinery was a necessary consequence of the
needs of the market. Since 1825, the invention and ap-
plication of machinery has been simply the result of the
war between workers and employers. But this is only
true of England. As for the European nations, they
were driven to adopt machinery owing to English com-
petition both in their home markets and on the world
market. Finally, in North America the introduction of

MAHX to P. V. ANNENKOV

185

machinery was due both to competition with other
countries and to lack of hands, that is, to the dispropor-
tion between the population of North America and its
industrial needs. From these facts you can see what
sagacity Monsieur Proudhon develops when he con-
jures up the spectre of competition as the third evolu-
tion, the antithesis to machinery!

Lastly and in general, it is altogether absurd to make
machinery an economic category alongside with divi-
sion of labour, competition, credit, etc.

Machinery is no more an economic category than
the ox which draws the plough. The application of
machinery in the present day is one of the relations of
our present economic system, but the way in which
machinery is utilized is totally distinct from the
machinery itself. Powder remains the same whether it
is used to wound a man or to dress his wounds.

M. Proudhon surpasses himself when he allows
competition, monopoly, taxes or police, balance of
trade, credit and property to develop inside his head in
the order in which I have mentioned them. Nearly all
credit institutions had been developed in England by
the beginning of the eighteenth century, before the
discovery of machinery. Public credit was only a fresh
method of increasing taxation and satisfying the new
demands created by the rise of the bourgeoisie to power.
Finally the last category in M. Proudhon’s system is
constituted by property. In the real world, on the other
hand, the division of labour and all M. Proudhon’s other
categories are social relations forming in their entirety
what is today known as property, outside these relations
bourgeois property is nothing but a metaphysical or
juristic illusion. The property of a different epoch,
feudal property, develops in a series of entirely different
social relations. M. Proudhon, by establishing property
as an independent relation, commits more than a
mistake in method: he clearly shows that he has not

186

MARX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

grasped the bond which holds together all forms of
bourgeois production, that he has not understood the
historical and transitory character of the forms of pro-
duction in a particular epoch. M. Proudhon, who does
not regard our social institutions as historical products,
who can understand neither their origin nor their
development, can only produce dogmatic criticism of
them.

M. Proudhon is therefore obliged to take refuge in a
fiction in order to explain development. He imagines
that division of labour, credit, machinery, etc., were all
invented to serve his fixed idea, the idea of equality.
His explanation is sublimely naive. These things were
invented in the interests of equality but unfortunately
they turned against equality. This constitutes his whole
argument. In other words, he makes a gratuitous as-
.sumption and then, as the actual development con-
tradicts his fiction at every step, he concludes that
there is a contradiction. He conceals from you the fact
that the contradiction exists solely between his fixed
ideas and the real movement.

Thus, M. Proudhon, mainly because he lacks the his-
torical knowledge, has not perceived that as men
develop their productive forces, that is, as they live,
they develop certain relations with one another and that
the nature of these relations must necessarily change
with the change and growth of the productive forces.
He has not perceived that economic categories are only
abstract expressions of these actual relations and only
remain true while these relations exist. He therefore
falls into the error of the bourgeois economists, who
regard these economic categories as eternal and not as
historical laws which are only laws for a particular
historical development, for a definite development of the
productive forces. Instead, therefore, of regarding the
political -economic categories as abstract expressions
of the real, transitory, historic social relations. Monsieur

MARX TO P, V. ANNENKOV

187

Proudhon, thanks to a mystic inversion, sees in the real
relations only embodiments of these abstractions. These
abstractions themselves are formulas which have been
slumbering in the heart of God the Father since the
beginning of the world.

But here our good M. Proudhon falls into severe in-
tellectual convulsions. If all these economic categories
are emanations from the heart of God, are the hidden
and eternal life of man, how does it come about, first,
that there is such a thing as development, and second-
ly, that M. Proudhon is not a conservative? He explains
these evident contradictions by a whole system of an-
tagonisms.

To throw light on this system of antagonisms let us
take an example.

Monopoly is a good thing, because it is an economic
category and therefore an emanation of God. Competi-
tion is a good thing because it is also an economic
category. But what is not good is the reality of monop-
oly and the reality of competition. What is still worse
is the fact that competition and monopoly devour each
other. What is to be done? As these two eternal ideas
of' God contradict each other, it seems obvious to him
that there is also within the bosom of God a synthesis
of them both, in which the evils of monopoly are
balanced by competition and vice versa. As a result of
the struggle between the two ideas only their good side
will come into view. One must snatch this secret idea
from God and then apply it and everything will be for
the best; the synthetic formula which lies hidden in the
darkness of the impersonal reason of man must be
revealed. M. Proudhon does not hesitate for a moment
to come forward as the revealer.

But look for a moment at real life. In the economic
life of the present time you find not only competition
and ' monopoly but also their synthesis, which is not a
formula but a movement Monopoly, produces competi-

188

MARX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

tion, competition produces monopoly. But this equa-
tion, far from removing the difficulties of the present
situation, as the bourgeois economists imagine it does,
results in a situation still more difficult and confused.
If therefore you alter the basis on which present-day
economic relations rest, if you destroy the present mode
of production, then you will not only destroy competi-
tion, monopoly and their antagonism, but also their
unity, their synthesis, the movement which is the real
equilibrium of competition and monopoly.

Now I will give you an example of Monsieur Prou-
dhon’s dialectics.

Freedom and slavery constitute an antagonism. I
need not speak of the good and bad sides of freedom
nor, speaking of slavery, need I dwell on its bad sides.
The only thing that has to be explained is its good side.
We are not dealing with indirect slavery, the slavery of
the proletariat, but with direct slavery, the slavery of
the black races in Surinam, in Brazil, in the Southern
States of North America.

Direct slavery is as much the pivot of our industrial-
ism today as machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery
no cotton; without cotton no modern industry. Slavery
has given value to the colonies; the colonies have
created world trade; world trade is the necessary con-
dition of large-scale machine industry. Thus, before the
traffic in Negroes began, the colonies supplied the Old
World with only very few products and made no visible
change in the face of the earth. Slavery is therefore an
economic category of the highest importance. Without
slavery North America, the most progressive country,
would be transformed into a patriarchal land. You have
only to wipe North America off the map of the nations
and you get anarchy, the total decay of trade and of
modern civilization. But to let slavery disappear is to
wipe North America off the map of the nations. And
therefore, because it is an economic category, we find

MAKX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

185

slavery in every nation since the world began. Modern
nations have merely known how to disguise slavery of
their own countries while they openly imported it into
the New World. After these observations on slavery,
how will our worthy M. Proudhon proceed? He will
look for the synthesis between freedom and slavery, the
golden mean or equilibrium between slavery and
freedom.

Monsieur Proudhon has very well grasped the fact
that men produce cloth, linen, silks, and it is a great
merit on his part to have grasped this small amount!
What he has not grasped is that these men, according
to their abilities, also produce the social relations amid
which they prepare cloth and linen. Still less has he
understood that men, who produce their social relations
in accordance with their material productivity, also
produce ideas, categories, that is to say the abstract
ideal expression of these same social relations. Thus
the categories are no more eternal than the relations
they express. They are historical and transitory prod-
ucts. For M. Proudhon, on the contrary, abstractions,
categories are the primordial cause. According to him
they, and not men, make history. The abstraction, the
category taken as such, i.e., apart from men and their
material activities, is of course immortal, unchangeable,
unmoved; it is only one form of the being of pure reason;
which is only another way of saying that the abstrac-
tion as such is abstract. An admirable tautology!

Thus, regarded as categories, economic relations for
M.. Proudhon are eternal formulas without origin or
progress.

iLet us put it in another way: M. Proudhon does not
directly state that bourgeois life is for him an eternal
verity, he states it indirectly by deifying the categories
which express bourgeois relations in the form of
thought. He takes the products of bourgeois society for
spontaneously arisen eternal beings, endowed with a

190

MARX TO P. V. AtWEMKOV

life of their own, as soon as they present themselves to
his mind in the form of categories, in the form of
thought. So he does not rise above the bourgeois
horizon. As he is operating with bourgeois ideas, the
eternal truth of which he presupposes, he seeks a
synthesis, an equilibrium of these ideas, and does not
see that the present method by which they reach equi-
librium is the only possible one.

Indeed he does what all good bourgeois do. They all
tell you that in principle, that is, considered as abstract
ideas, competition, monopoly, etc., are the only basis
of life, but that in practice they leave much to be
desired. They all want competition without the lethal
effects of competition. They all want the impossible,
namely, the conditions of bourgeois existence without
the necessary consequences of those conditions. None
of them understands that the bourgeois form of pro-
duction is historical and transitory, just as the feudal
form was. This mistake arises from the fact that the
bourgeois man is to them the only possible basis of
every society; they cannot imagine a society in which
men have ceased to be bourgeois.

M. Proudhon is therefore necessarily doctrinaire. To
him the historical movement which is turning the pres-
ent-day world upside down reduces itself to the problem
of discovering the correct equilibrium, the synthesis, of
two bourgeois thoughts. And so the clever fellow is able
by his cunning to discover the hidden thought of God,
the unity of two isolated thoughts — which are only
isolated because M. Proudhon has isolated them from
practical life, from present-day production, that is, from
the union of realities which they express.

In place of the great historical movement arisiiig
from the conflict between the productive forces already
acquired by men and their social relations, which no
longer correspond to these productive forces; in place
of the terrible wars which are being prepared between

MARX TO P. V. ANNENKOV

191

the different classes within each nation and between
different nations; in place of the practical and violent
action of the masses by which alone these conflicts can
be resolved — in place of this vast, prolonged and com-
plicated movement, Monsieur Proudhon supplies the
whimsical motion of his own head. So it is the men of
learning that make history, the men who know how to
purloin God’s secret thoughts. The common people have
only to apply their revelations. You will now understand
why M. Proudhon is the declared enemy of every polit-
ical movement. The solution of present problems does
not lie for him in public action but in the dialectical
rotations of his own mind. Since to him the categories
are the motive force, it is not necessary to change
practical life in order to change the categories. Quite
the contrary. One must change the categories and the
consequence will be a change in the existing society.

In his desire to reconcile the contradictions Monsieur
Proudhon does not even ask if the very basis of those
contradictions must not be overthrown. He is exactly
like the political doctrinaire who wants to have the
king and the chamber of deputies and the chamber of
peers as integral parts of social life, as eternal
categories. All he is looking for is a new formula by
which to establish an equilibrium between these powers
whose equilibrium consists precisely in the actual move-
ment in which one power is now the conqueror and now
the slave of the other. Thus in the eighteenth century
a number of mediocre minds were busy finding the
true formula which would bring the social estates,
nobility, king, parliament, etc., into equilibrium, and
they woke up one morning to find that there was in
fact no longer any king, parliament or nobility. The
true equilibrium in this antagonism was the overthrow
of all the social relations which served as a basis for
these feudal existences and for the antagonisms of
these feudal existences. ■:

m

MAftX to P. V. ANNhENKOV

Because M. Proudhon places eternal ideas, the
categories of pure reason, on the one side and human
beings and their practical life, which according to him
is the application of these categories, on the other, one
finds with him from the beginning a dualism between
life and ideas, between soul and body, a dualism which
recurs in many forms. You can see now that this anta-
gonism is nothing but the incapacity of M. Proudhon to
understand the profane origin and the profane history
of the categories which he deifies.

My letter is already too long for me to speak of the
absurd case which M. Proudhon puts up against com-
munism. For the moment you will grant me that a man
who has not understood the present state of society may
be expected to understand still less the movement which
is tending to overthrow it, and the literary expressions
of this revolutionary movement.

The sole point on which I am in complete agreement
with Monsieur Proudhon is in his dislike for sentimental
socialistic day dreams. I had already, before him, drawn
much enmity upon myself by ridiculing this sentimental,
utopian, mutton-headed socialism. But is not M. Prou-
dhon strangely deluding himself when he sets up his
petty-bourgeois sentimentality — I am referring to his
declamations about home, conjugal love and all such
banalities — in opposition to socialist sentimentality,
which in Fourier, for example, goes much deeper than
the pretentious platitudes of our worthy Proudhon? Fie
himself is so thoroughly conscious of the emptiness of
his arguments, of his utter incapacity to speak about
these things, that he bursts into violent explosions of
rage, vociferation and righteous wrath [irae hominis
probi], foams at the mouth, curses, denounces, cries
shame and murder, beats his breast and boasts before
God and man that he is not defiled by the socialist in-
famies! He does not seriously criticize socialist senti-
mentalities, or what he regards as such. Like a holy

MARX TO P. V. AJSnstENKOV

193

man, a pope, he excommunicates poor sinners and sings
the glories of the petty bourgeoisie and of the miserable
patriarchal and amorous illusions of the domestic
hearth. And this is no accident. From head to foot
M. Proudhon is the philosopher and economist of the
petty bourgeoisie. In an advanced society the petty
bourgeois is necessarily from his very position a
socialist on the one side and an economist on the other;
that is to say, he is dazed by the magnificence of the
big bourgeoisie and has sympathy for the sufferings of
the people. He is at once both bourgeois and man of
the people. Deep down in his heart he flatters himself
that he is impartial and has found the right equilibrium,
which claims to be something different from mediocrity.
A petty bourgeois of this type glorifies contradiction
because contradiction is the basis of his existence. He
is himself nothing but social contradiction in action. He
must justify in theory what he is in practice, and
M. Proudhon has the merit of being the scientific in-
terpreter of the French petty bourgeoisie — a genuine
merit, because the petty bourgeoisie will form an inte-
gral part of all the impending social revolutions.

I wish I could send you my book on political economy
with this letter, but it has so far been impossible for
me to get this work, and the criticism of the German
philosophers and Socialists of which I spoke to you in
Brussels, printed. You would never believe the
difficulties which a publication of this kind comes up
against in Germany, from the police on the one hand
and from the booksellers, who are themselves the in-
terested representatives of all the tendencies I am
attacking, on the other. And as for our own Party, it is
not merely that it is poor, but a large section of the
German Communist Party is also angry with me for
opposing their utopias and declamations

13—1464

MARX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

London, January 24, 186,5

Dear Sir,

Yesterday I received a letter in which you demand
from me a detailed judgment of Proudhon. Lack of time
prevents me from fulfilling your desire. Added to which
I have none of his works to hand. However, in order to
assure you of my good will I am hastily jotting down
a brief sketch. You can complete it, add to it or cut it —
in short do anything you like with it.®'

Proudhon’s earliest efforts I no longer remember. His
school work about the Langue Universelle [Universal
Language] shows with what little ceremony he attacked
problems for the solution of which he lacked the first
elements of knowledge.

His first work, Qu’est ce que la propriete? [What Is
Property?] , is undoubtedly his best. It is epoch-making,
if not from the novelty of its content, at least by the
new and audacious way of coming out with everything.
Of course “property” had been not only criticized in
various ways but also "done away with" in the utopian
manner by the French Socialists and Communists
whose works he knew. In this book Proudhon’s rela-
tion to Saint-Simon and Fourier is about the same as
that of Feuerbach to Hegel. Compared with Hegel,
Feuerbach is extremely poor. All the same he was
epoch-making after Hegel because he laid stress on
certain points which were disagreeable to the Christian
consciousness but important for the progress of criticism,
and which Hegel had left in mystic semi-obscurity.

MARX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

195

Proudhon’s still strong muscular style, if I may be
allowed the expression, prevails in this book. And its
style is in my opinion its chief merit.

Even where he is only reproducing old stuff, one can
see that Proudhon has found it out for himself, that
what he is saying is new to him and ranks as new. The
provocative defiance, laying hands on the economic
“holy of holies,” the brilliant paradox which made a
mock of the ordinary bourgeois mind, the withering
criticism, the bitter irony, and, revealed here and there
behind these, a deep and genuine feeling of indigna-
tion at the infamy of the existing order, a revolutionary
earnestness — all these electrified the readers of What
Is Property? and produced a great sensation on its
first appearance. In a strictly scientific history of polit-
ical economy the book would hardly be worth men-
tioning. But sensational works of this kind play their
part in the sciences just as much as in the history of
the novel. Take, for instance, Malthus’s book on Popula-
tion. In its first edition it was nothing but a “sensa-
tional pamphlet” and plagiarism from beginning to
end into the bargain. And yet what a stimulus was pro-
duced by this libel on the human race\

If I had Proudhon’s book before me I could easily
give a few examples to illustrate his early style. In the
passages which he himself regarded as the most im-
portant he imitates Kant’s treatment of the antinomies
—Kant, whose works he had read in translations, was
at that time the only German philosopher he knew — and
he leaves one with a strong impression that to him, as
to Kant, the resolution of the antinomies is something
“beyond" the human understanding, i.e., something
about which his own understanding is in the dark.

But in spite of all his apparent iconoclasm one
already finds in What Is Property? the contradiction
that Proudhon is criticizing society, on the one han8, from
the standpoint and with the eyes of a French small peas-

13 *

196

MARX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

ant (later petty bourgeois) and, on the other, with the
standards derived from his inheritance from the Socialists.

The deficiency of the book is indicated by its very title.
The question was so falsely formulated that it could
not be answered correctly. Ancient “property relations”
were swallowed up by feudal property relations and
these by “bourgeois” property relations. Thus history
itself had practised its criticism upon past property
relations. What Proudhon was actually dealing with
was modern bourgeois property as it exists today. The
question of what this is could only have been answered
by a critical analysis of “political economy” embracing
these property relations as a whole, not in their legal
expression as voluntary relations but in their real form,
that is, as relations of production. But as he entangled the
whole of these economic relations in the general juristic
conception of “property,” Proudhon could not get beyond
the answer which Brissot, in a similar work, had already,
before 1789, given in the same words: “Property is theft.”

The most that can be got out of this is that the bour-
geois juristic conceptions of “theft” apply equally well
to the “honest” gains of the bourgeois himself. On the
other hand, since theft as a forcible violation of property
presupposes the existence of property, Proudhon en-
tangled himself in all sorts of fantasies, obscure even to
himself, about true bourgeois property.

During ray stay in Paris in 1844 I came into personal
contact with Proudhon. I mention this here because to
a certain extent I am also to blame for his “sophisti-
cation,” as the English call the adulteration of com-
mercial goods. In the course of lengthy debates often
lasting all night, I infected him to his great injury with
Hegelianism, which, owing to his lack of German, he
could not study properly. After my expulsion from Paris
Herr Karl Griln continued what I had begun. As a teacher
of Gerfnan philosophy he also had the advantage over
me that he .understood nothing about it himself.

MARX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

197

Shortly before the appearance of Proudhon’s second
important work, Philosophie de la Misere, etc., he an-
nounced this to me himself in a very detailed letter in
which he said, among other things: “I await the lash of
your criticism.” This soon fell upon him in my Misere
de la Philosophie, etc., Paris 1847, in a fashion which
ended our friendship for ever.

From what I have already said you can see that Prou-
dhon’s Philosophie de la Misere ou Systeme des Con-
tradictions economiques first actually contained his
answer to the question What Is Property} In fact it was
only after the publication of this latter work that he
had begun his economic studies; he had discovered that
the question he had raised could not be answered by
invective, but only by an analysis of modern “political
economy.” At the same time he attempted to present the
system of economic categories dialectically. In place of
Kant’s insoluble “antinomies," the Hegelian “contradic-
tion” was to be introduced as the means of development.

For an estimate of his book, which is in two fat
volumes, I must refer you to the work I wrote as a reply.
There I showed, among other things, how little he has
penetrated into the secret of scientific dialectics and
how', on the contrary, he shares the illusions of specu-
lative philosophy in his treatment of the economic cate-
gories-, how instead of conceiving them as the theoreti-
cal expression of historical relations of production, cor-
responding to a particular stage of development in ma-
terial production, he transforms them by his twaddle
into pre-existing eternal ideas, and in this roundabout
way arrives once more at the standpoint of bourgeois
economy.*

I also show further how very deficient and sometimes
even schoolboyish his knowledge is of the “political

* “When the economists say that .present-day relations — the
relations of bourgeois production — are natural, they imply that
these are the relations in which wealth is created and produc-

198

MARX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

economy” which he undertook to criticize, and how he
and the Utopians are hunting for a so-called ‘'science'
by which a formula for the “solution of the social ques-
tion” is to be excogitated a priori, instead of deriving
their science from a critical knowledge of the historical
movement, a movement which itself produces the ma-
terial conditions of emancipation. But especially I show
how confused, wrong and superficial Proudhon remains
with regard to exchange value, the basis of the whole
thing, and how he even tries to use the utopian inter-
pretation of Ricardos theory of value as the basis of a
new science. With regard to his general point of view
I made the following comprehensive judgment:

“Every economic relation has a good and a bad side;
it is the one point on which M. Proudhon does not give
himself the lie. He sees the good side expounded by the
economists; the bad side he sees denounced by the
Socialists. He borrows from the economists the necessity
of eternal relations; he borrows from the Socialists the
illusion of seeing in poverty nothing but poverty (instead
of seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive aspect which
will overthrow the old society). He is in agreement with
both in wanting to fall back upon the authority of sci-
ence. Science for him reduces itself to the slender pro-
portions of a scientific formula; he is the man in search
of formulas. Thus it is that M. Proudhon flatters himself
on having given a criticism of both political economy
and communism: he is beneath them both. Beneath the
economists, since, as a philosopher who has at his elbow
a magic formula, he thought he could dispense with
going into purely economic details; beneath the Social-

live forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These
relations therefore are themselves natural laws independent of
the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always
g'overn society. Thus there has been history, but there is no long-
er any” (p. 113 of my work). [Note by Marx.] [See present
edition, p. 120. — Ed.]

MARX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

199

ists, because he has neither courage enough nor insight
enough to rise, be it even speculatively, above the bour-
geois horizon

“He wants to soar as the man of science above the
bourgeois and the proletarians; he is merely the petty
bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between
capital and labour, political economy and commu-
nism.

Severe though the above judgment sounds I must still
endorse every word of it today. At the same time,
however, it must be remembered that at the time when
I declared his book to be the petty-bourgeois code of
socialism and proved this theoretically, Proudhon was
still being branded as an extreme arch-revolutionary
alike by the political economists and by the Socialists.
That is why even later on I never joined in the outcry
about his “treachery” to the revoluHon. It was not his
fault that, originally misunderstood by others as well
as by himself, he failed to fulfil unjustified hopes.

In the Philosophy of Poverty all the defects of Prou-
dhon’s method of presentation stand out very unfavour-
ably in comparison with What Is Property} The style is
often what the French call ampoule [bombastic] . High-
sounding speculative jargon, supposed to be German-
philosophical, appears regularly on the scene when his
Gallic acuteness of understanding fails him. A self-ad-
vertising, self-glorifying, boastful tone and especially
the twaddle about “science” and sham display of it,
which are always so unedifying, are continually scream-
ing in one’s ears. Instead of the genuine warmth which
glowed in his first attempt, here certain passages are
systematically worked up into a momentary heat by
rhetoric. Add to this the clumsy distasteful erudition
of the self-taught, whose primitive pride in his own orig-
inal thought has already been broken and who now as
a parvenu of science, feels it necessary to bolster him-
self up with what he is not and has not. Then the men-

200

MAHX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

tality of the petty bourgeois who in an indecently brutal
way — and neither acutely nor profoundly nor even cor-
rectly — attacks a man like Cabet, to be respected for
his practical attitude towards the proletariat, while he
flatters a man like Dunoyer (a “State Councillor,” it is
true). Yet the whole significance of this Dunoyer lay in
the comic zeal with which, throughout three fat, unbear-
ably boring volumes, he preached the rigourism char-
acterized by Helvetius as “On veut que les malheureux
soient parfaits” (demanding that the unfortunate should
be perfect) .

The February Revolution certainly came at a very in-
convenient moment for Proudhon, who had irrefutably
proved only a few weeks before that “the era of revolu-
tions" was past for ever. His coming forward in the
National Assembly, however little insight it showed into
existing conditions, was worthy of every praise. After
the June insurrection it was an act of great courage. In
addition it had the fortunate consequence that M. Thiers,
by his speech opposing Proudhon’s proposals, which
was then issued as a special publication, proved to the
whole of Europe on what a pedestal of children’s cat-
echism the intellectual pillar of the French bourgeoisie
was based. Indeed, compared with M. Thiers, Proudhon
expanded to the size of an antediluvian colossus.

Proudhon’s discovery of “Credit gratuit” [free credit]
and the “banque du peuple" [people’s bank] based upon
it, were his last economic “deeds.” In my book A Con
tribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Part I,
Berlin 1859 (pp. 59-64), will be found the proof that the
theoretical basis of his idea arises from a misunder-
standing of the first elements of bourgeois “political
economy,” namely of the relation between commodities
and money; while the practical superstructure is simply
a reproduction of much older and far better developed
schemes.

That under certain economic and political conditions

MARX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

201

the credit system can serve to hasten the emancipation
of the working class, just as, for instance, in the begin-
ning of the eighteenth and again at the beginning of the
nineteenth century in England, it served towards trans-
ferring the wealth of one class to another, is quite un-
questionable, self-evident. But to regard interest-bearing
capital as the main form of capital while trying to use
a special form of credit, the alleged abolition of interest,
as the basis for a transformation of society is a
thoroughly petty-bourgeois fantasy. Hence indeed this
fantasia, eked out further, is already to be found among
the economic spokesmen of the English petty bourgeoisie
in the seventeenth century. Proudhon’s polemic with Bas-
tiat( 1850) about interest-bearing capital is on a far lower
level than the Philosophy of Poverty. Ele succeeds in get-
ting himself beaten even by Bastiat and breaks into bur-
lesque bluster when his opponent drives his blows home.

A few years ago Proudhon — instigated I think by the
government of Lausanne — wrote a prize essay on Taxa-
tion. Here the last flicker of genius is extinguished.
Nothing remains but the petty bourgeois pure and simple.

So far as his political and philosophical writings are
concerned they all show the same contradictory, dual
character as his economic works. Moreover, their value
is confined to France alone. Nevertheless his attacks on
religion, the church, etc., were of great merit in his own
country at a time when the French Socialists thought h
desirable to show by their religiosity how superior they
were to the bourgeois Voltairianism of the eighteenth
century and the German godlessness of the nineteenth.
If Peter the Great defeated Russian barbarism by bar-
barity, Proudhon did his best to defeat French phrase-
mongering by phrases. His work on the Coup d’etat, in
which he flirts with Louis Bonaparte and, in fact, strives
to make him palatable to the French workers, and his
last work, written against Poland, in which for the
greater glory of the tsar he expresses the cynicism of a

202

MARX TO J. B. SCHWEITZER

cretin, must be characterized as not merely bad but base
productions; of a baseness which corresponds, however,
to the petty-bourgeois point of view.

Proudhon has often been compared to Rousseau. Noth-
ing could be more erroneous. He is more like Nicolas
Linguet, whose Theorie des lois civiles, by the way, is
a very brilliant book.

Proudhon had a natural inclination for dialectics. But
as he never grasped realty scientific dialectics he never
got further than sophistry. In fact this hung together
with his petty-bourgeois point of view. Like the historian
Raumer, the petty bourgeois is composed of On The One
Hand and On The Other Hand. This is so in his econom-
ic interests and therefore in his politics, in his scientific,
religious and artistic views. It is so in his morals, in
everything. He is a living contradiction. If, like Prou-
dhon, he is in addition a gifted man, he will soon learn to
play with his own contradictions and develop them ac-
cording to circumstances into striking, ostentatious, now
scandalous or now brilliant paradoxes. Charlatanism in
science and accommodation in politics are inseparable
from such a point of view. There only remains one gov-
erning motive, the vanity of the subject, and the only
question for him, as for all vain people, is the success of
the moment, the attention of the day. Thus the simple
moral sense, which always kept a Rousseau, for instance,
far from even the semblance of compromise with the
powers that be, is necessarily extinguished.

Perhaps future generations will sum up the latest
phase of French development by saying that Louis
Bonaparte was its Napoleon and Proudhon its Rousseau-
Voltaire.

And now you must take upon yourself the responsibili-
ty of having imposed upon me the role of this man’s
judge so soon after his death.

Yours very respectfully.

Kart Marx

FROM MARX’S WORIC:

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY

Berlin, 1859. pp. 61-64

The theory of labour time as an immediate money unit
was first systematically developed by John Gray.*

He causes a national Central Bank through its branches
to certify the labour time expended in the production
of the various commodities. In exchange for the commod-
ity, the producer receives an official certificate of the val-
ue, i.e., a receipt for as much labour time as his commodi-
ty contains,** and these bank-notes of one labour week,
one labour day, one labour hour, etc., serve at the same
time as a claim on the equivalent in all commodities

* John Gray: The Social System, etc. A Treatise on the Prin-
ciple of Exchange, Edinburgh 1831. Compare Lectures on the
Nature and Use of Money, Edinburgh 1848, by the same author.
After the February Revolution, Gray sent a memorandum to the
French Provisional Government, in which he argued that France
was -not in need of an “organization of labour,” but of an “or-
ganization of exchange,” the plan of which, fully worked out,
was contained in the system of money which he had invented.
Tlhe gooid John had no inkling that sixteen years after the ap-
pearance of The Social System a patent for the same discovery
would be taken out by the inventive Proudhon.

Gray, The Social System, etc.^ p. 63. “Money should be
merely a receipt, an evidence that the holder ol it has either
contributed a certain value to the national stock of wealth, or
that he has acquired a right to the said value from some one
who has contributed to it.”

204

FROM MARX’S WORK:

stored in the warehouses of the bank.* This is the basic
principle, carefully worked out in detail and throughout
adapted to existing English institutions. With this sys-
tem, says Gray, “to sell for money may be rendered, at all
times, precisely as easy as it now is to buy with money;
production would become the uniform and never failing
cause of demand.”** The precious metals would lose their
“privilege” over other commodities and would “take
their proper place in the market beside butter and eggs,
and cloth and calico, and then the value of the precious
metals will concern us just as little as the value of the
diamond.”*** “Shall we retain our fictitious standard of
value, gold, and thus keep the productive resources of the
country in bondage? or, shall we resort to the natural
standard of value, labour, and thereby set our productive
resources free?”****

Since labour time is the immanent measure of value,
why have another external measure alongside of it? Why
does exchange value develop into price? Why do all
commodities have their values estimated in one exclusive
commodity, which is thus transformed into the adequate
existence of exchange value, into money? This was the
problem that Gray had to solve. Instead of solving it,
he imagines that commodities can have an immediate
relation to one another as products of social labour.
They can, however, only have a relation to one another
as what they are. Commodities are, immediately, products
of isolated, independent, private pieces of labour which

* “An estimated value being previously put upon produce,
let it be lodged in a bank, and drawn out again whenever it
is required; merely stipulating, by common consent, that he who
lodges any kind of property in the proposed national Bank, may
take out of it an equal value of Whatever it may contain, in-
stead of being obliged to draw out the self-same thing that he
put in.” Loc. cit., p. 68.

** Loc. cit., p. 16.

*** Gray, Lectures on Money, etc., pp. 182-183.

**** Loc. cit., p. 169.

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 206

must be sanctioned as general social labour by their
alienation in the process of private exchange, or labour
on the basis of commodity production only 'becomes
social labour by the all-round alienation of the individu-
al pieces of work. But if Gray substitutes the labour time
contained in the commodities as immediately social, then
he substitutes it as social labour or the labour time of
directly associated individuals. Thus, in fact, a specific
commodity, like gold or silver, would not be able to be
contrasted with other commodities as the incarnation of
general labour, exchange value would not become price,
neither would use value also become exchange value, the
product would not become a commodity and so the basis
of bourgeois production would be done away with. But
this is by no means Gray’s opinion. Products are to be
produced as commodities but not to be exchanged as
commodities.

Gray hands over to a national Bank the execution of
this pious wish. On the one hand, society in the form of
the bank makes the individuals dependent on the condi-
tions of private exchange, and, on the other hand, society
makes them continue to produce on the basis of private
exchange. Inner logic meanwhile drives Gray to renounce
one bourgeois condition of production aikr another,
although he only wants to “reform” mone^rising out
of commodity exchange. Thus, he converts capital into
national capital,* landed property into national prop-
erty,** and if his bank is examined closely it will be
found that it does not merely receive commodities with
one hand and with the other give out c^ficates of labour
supplied, but that it regulates produOTon itself. In his
last work. Lectures on Money, in which Gray anxiously

* “The business of every nation i|M be conducted upon the
basis of a national capitaJ.” (John Gray: The Social System,
etc., p. 171.)

** “The land to be converted into national property.” (Loc.

206

FROM MARX’S WORK

tries to represent his labour money as a purely bourgeois
reform, he entangles himself in still more blatant
nonsense*

Every commodity is immediately money. This was
Gray’s theory, derived from his incomplete and con-
sequently false analysis of commodities. The “organic”
construction of “labour money” and “national bank” and
“commodity warehouses” is only a dream picture, in
which dogma is palmed off as a universal law. The
dogma that a commodity is immediately money, or that
the particular labour of the private individual contained
in it is immediately social labour, naturally does not
become true by a bank believing in it and operating
according to it. Bankruptcy would in such a case most
likely take the place of practical criticism. What is con-
cealed in Gray and indeed remains a secret even to
himself, viz., that labour money is an economic-sounding
phrase for the pious wish to get rid of money, and with
money to get rid of exchange value, and with exchange
value to get rid of commodities, and with commodities
to get rid of the bourgeois system of production, this is
spoken out point-blank by some English Socialists who
have written partly before and partly after Gray.* But it
has been reeved for Proudhon and his school to preach
seriously tW degradation of money and the ascent to
heaven of commodities as the kernel of socialism and
thereby to resolve socialism into an elementary misun-
derstanding of the necessary connection between com-
modities and money.**

* See e.g., W. Thompson: An Inquiry into the Distribution
of Wealth, etc. London 183|kBray: Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s
Remedy. Leeds 1839. ^ ' :

** As a compendium of this melodramatic theory of money can
be regarded: Alfred Darimont: Dt la reforme des banques, Paris
1856.

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

Public Speech. Delivered by Karl Marx before the

Democratic Association of Brussels, January 9, 184853

Gentlemen,

The Repeal of the Corn Laws in England is the great-
est triumph of free trade in the nineteenth century. In
every country where manufacturers talk of free trade,
they have in mind chiefly free trade in corn and raw ma-
terials in general. To impose protective duties on foreign
corn is infamous, it is to speculate on the famine of
peoples.

Cheap food, high wages, this is the sole aim for which
English free-traders have spent millions, and their enthu-
siasm has already spread to their brethren on the Conti-
nent. Generally speaking, those who wish for free trade
desire it in order to alleviate the condition of the working
class.

But, strange to say, the people for whom cheap food
is to be procured at all costs are very ungrateful. Cheap
food is as ill-esteemed in England as cheap government
is in France. The people see in these self-sacrificing gen-
tlemen, in Bowring, Bright and Co., their worst enemies
and the most shameless hypocrites. #

Every one knows that in England the struggle between
Liberals and Democrats takes the name of the struggle
between Free Traders and ChartMs.

Let us see now how the English fr* -traders have proved
to the people the good intentions that animate them.

This is what they said to the factory workers:

208

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

“The duty levied on corn is a tax upon wages; this tax
you pay to the landlords, those mediceval aristocrats; if
your position is a wretched one, it is on account of the
dearness of the immediate necessities of life.”

The workers in turn asked the manufacturers;

“How is it that in the course of the last thirty years,
while our industry has undergone the greatest develop-
ment, our wages have fallen far more rapidly, in propor-
tion, than the price of corn has gone up?

“The tax which you say we pay the landlords is about
three pence a week per worker. And yet the wages of the
hand-loom weaver fell, between 1815 and 1843, from 28s.
per week to 5s., and the wages of the power-loom weav-
ers, between 1823 and 1843, from 20s. per week to 8s.

“And during the whole of this period that portion of
the tax which we paid to the landlord has never exceeded
three pence. And, then, in the year 1834, when bread was
very cheap and business going on very well, what did
you tell us? You said, ‘If you are unfortunate, it is be-
cause you have too many children, and your marriages
are more productive than your labour!’

“These are the very words you spoke to us, and you
set about making new Poor Laws, and building work-
houses, those Bastilles of the proletariat.”

To this til manufacturers replied:

“You are right, worthy labourers; it is not the price of
corn alone, but competition of the hands among them-
selves as well, which determines wages.

“But ponder well one thing, namely, that our soil con-
sists only of rocks and sandbanks. You surely do not
imagine that cofll^can be grown in flower-pots. So if, in-
stead of lavishing our capital and our labour upon a
thoroughly sterile soil, we were to give up agriculture,
and devote ourselves ^clusively to industry, all Europe
would abandon its factories, and England would form
one huge factory town, with the whole of the rest of
Europe for its countryside.”

ON THE QUESTION OP FEEE TRADE

209^

While thus haranguing his own ifrorkingmen, the man-
ufacturer is interrogated by the small trader, who says
to him:

“If we repeal the Corn Laws, we shall indeed ruin
agriculture; but for all that, we shall not compel other
nations to give up their own factories and buy from ours.

“What will the consequence be? I shall lose the cus-
tomers that I have at present in the country, and the
home trade will lose its market.”

The manufacturer, turning his back upon the workers,
replies to the shopkeeper: ;

“As to that, you leave it to us! Once rid of the duty on
corn, we shall import cheaper corn from abroad. Then
we shall reduce wages at the very time when they rise in
the countries where we get our corn.

“Thus in addition to the advantages which we already
enjoy we shall also have that of lower wages and, with
all these advantages, we shall easily force the Continent
to buy from us.”

But now the farmers and agricultural labourers join
in the discussion.

“And what, pray, is to become of us?

“Are we going to pass a sentence of death upon agri-
culture, from which we get our living? Are we to allow
the soil to be torn from beneath our feet?”

As its whole answer the Anti-Corn Law League has
contented itself with offering prizes for the three best es-
says upon the wholesome influence of the repeal of fhS
Corn Laws on English agriculture.

These prizes were carried off by Messrs. Hope, Morse
and Greg, whose essays were distributed in thousands
of copies throughout the countryside.

The first of the prize-winners devotes himself to prov-
ing that neither the tenant farmer nor the agricultural
labourer will lose by the free importation of foreigrii
corn,' but' only the landlord. “The English tenant
farmer,” he -exclaims, “need not -fear the repeal of the

14 — 1464

?10

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

Corn Laws, because no other country can produce such
good corn so cheaply as England.

“Thus, even if the price of corn fell, it would not hurt
you, because this fall would only affect rent, which
would go down, and not at all industrial profit and
wages, which would remain stationary.”

The second prize-winner, Mr. Morse, maintains, on the
contrary, that the price of corn will rise in consequence
of repeal. He takes infinite pains to prove that protective
duties have never been able to secure a remunerative
price for corn.

. In support of his assertion he cites the fact that, when-
ever foreign corn has been imported, the price of corn
in England has gone up considerably, and that when
little corn has been imported, the price has fallen ex-
tremely. This prize-winner forgets that the importation
was not the cause of the high price, but that the high
price was the cause of the importation.

And in direct contradiction to his co-prize-winner, he
asserts that every rise in the price of corn is profitable
to both the tenant farmer and the labourer, but not to
the landlord.

, ; The third prize-winner, Mr. Greg, who is a big manu-
facturer and whose work is addressed to the large tenant
farmers, could not hold with such stupidities. His lan-
guage is more scientfic.

He admits that the Corn Laws can raise rent only by
raising the price of corn, and that they can raise the
price of corn only by compelling capital to apply itself
to land of inferior quality, and this is explained quite
simply.

In proportion as population increases, if foreign corn
cannot be imported, less fertile soil has to be used, the
cultivation of which involves more expense and the
product of this soil is consequently dearer.

There being a forced sale for corn, the price will of
necessity be determined by the price of the product of

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

211

the most costly soil. The difference between this price
and the cost of production upon soil of better quality
constitutes the rent.

If, therefore, as a result of the repeal of the Corn
Laws, the price of corn, and consequently the rent, falls,
it is because inferior soil will no longer be cultivated.
Thus, the reduction of rent must inevitably ruin a part
of the tenant farmers.

These remarks were necessary in order to make Mr.
Greg’s language comprehensible.

“The small farmers,” he says, “who cannot support
themselves by agriculture will find a resource in
industry. As to the large tenant farmers, they cannot fail
to profit. Either the landlords will be obliged to sell them
land very cheap, or leases will be made out for very long
periods. This will enable tenant farmers to apply large
sums of capital to the land, to use agricultural machin-
ery on a larger scale, and to save manual labour, which
will, moreover, be cheaper, on account of the general
fall in wages, the immediate consequence of the repeal
of the Corn Laws.”

Dr. Bowring conferred upon all these arguments the
consecration of religion, by exclaiming at a public meet-
ing, “Jesus Christ is Free Trade, and Free Trade is Jesus
Christ.”

One can understand that all this hypocrisy was not
calculated to make cheap bread attractive to the workers.

Besides, how could the workingman understand the
sudden philanthropy of the manufacturers, the very men
still busy fighting against the Ten Hour’s Bill, which
was to reduce the working day of the mill hands from
twelve hours to ten?

To give you an idea of the philanthropy of these
manufacturers I would remind you, gentlemen, of the
factory regulations in force in all the mills.

Every manufacturer has for his own private use a reg-
ular penal code in which fines are laid down for every

14 *

212

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

voluntary or involuntary oflence. For instance, the
worker pays so much if he has the misfortune to sit
down on a chair; if he whispers, or speaks, or laughs;
if he arrives a few moments too late; if any part of the
machine breaks, or he does not turn out work of the
quality desired, etc., etc. The fines are always greater
than the damage really done by the worker. And to give
the worker every opportunity for incurring fines, the
factory clock is set forward, and he is given bad raw
material to make into good pieces of stuff. An overseer
not sufficiently skilful in multiplying cas^es of infraction
of rules is discharged.

You see, gentlemen, this private legislation is enacted
for the especial purpose of creating such infractions, and
infractions are manufactured for the purpose of making
money. Thus the manufacturer uses every means of re-
ducing the nominal wage, and of profiting even by acci-
dents over which the worker has no control.

These manufacturers are the same philanthropists who
have tried to make the workers believe that they were
capable of going to immense expense for the sole purpose
of ameliorating their lot. Thus, on the one hand, they
-nibble at the wages of the worker in the pettiest way, by
means of factory regulations, and, on the other, they are
undertaking the greatest sacrifices to raise those wages
again by means of the Anti-Corn Law League.

, They build great palaces at immense expense, in which
the League takes up, in some respects, its official resi-
dence; they send an army of missionaries to all corners
of England to preach the gospel of free trade; they have
printed and distributed gratis thousands of pamphlets to
enlighten the worker upon his own interests, they spend
enormous sums to make the press favourable to their
cause; they organize a vast administrative system for the
conduct of the free trade movement, and they display all
their wealth of eloquence at public meetings. It was at
one of these meetings that a worker cried out; . .

ON THE question OP FREE TRADE

213

“If the landlords were to sell our boues, you manufac-
turers would be the first to buy them in order to put them
through a steam-mill and make flour of them.”

The English workers hajve very well understood the
significance of the struggle between the landlords and
the industrial capitalists. They know very well that the
price of bread was to be reduced in order to reduce
wages, and that industrial profit would rise by as much
as rent fell.

Ricardo, the apostle of the English free-traders, the
most eminent economist of our century, entirely agrees
with the workers upon this point. -In his celebrated work
on political economy, he says:

“If instead of growing our own corn ... we discover
a new market from which we can supply ourselves ... at
a cheaper price, wages will fall and profits rise. The fall
in the price of agricultural produce reduces the wages,
not only of the labourer employed in cultivating the soil,
but also of all those employed in commerce or manufac-
ture.”®*

And do not believe, gentlemen, that it is a matter of
indifference to* the worker whether he receives only four
francs on account of com being cheaper, when he had
been receiving five francs before.

Have not his wages always fallen in comparison with
profit, and is it not clear that his social position has
grown worse as compared with that of the capitalist?
Besides which he loses more as a matter of fact.

So long as the price of corn was higher and wages
were also higher, a small saving in the consumption of
bread sufficed to prcwure him other enjoyments. But as
soon as bread is very cheap, and wages are therefore
very cheap, he can save almost nothing on bread for the
purchase of other articles.

The English workers have made the English free-trad-
ers realize that they are not the dupes of their illusions
or of their lies; and if, in spite of this, the workers made
15—1464

ON THE QUESTION OP FREE TRADE

common cause with them against the landlords, it was
for the purpose of destroying the last remnants of feu-
dalism and in order to have only one enemy left to deal
with. The workers have not miscalculated, for the land-
lords, in order to revenge themselves upon the manu-
facturers, made common cause with the workers to
carry the Ten Hours’ Bill, which the latter had been
vainly demanding for thirty years, and which
was passed immediately after the repeal of the Corn
Laws.

When Dr. Bowring, at the Congress of Economists,®®
drew from his pocket a long list to show how many head
of cattle, how much ham, bacon, poultry, etc. , was im-
ported into England, to be consumed, as he asserted, by
the workers, he unfortunately forgot to tell you that at
the time the workers of Manchester and other factory
towns were finding themselves thrown on the streets by
the crisis which was beginning.

As a matter of principle in political economy, the fig-
ures of a single year must never be taken as the basis
for formulating general laws. One must always take the
average period of from six to seven years — a period of
time during which modern industry passes through the
various phases of prosperity, overproduction, stagnation,
crisis, and completes its inevitable cycle.

Doubtless, if the price of all commodities falls — and
this is the necessary consequence of free trade — I can
buy far more for a franc than before. And the worker’s
franc is' as good as any other man’s. Therefore, free trade
will be very advantageous to the worker. ' There is only
one little difficulty in this, namely, that the worker, be-
fore he exchanges his franc for other commodities, has
first exchanged his labour with the capitalist. If in this
exchange he always received the said franc for the same
labour and the price of all other commodities fell, he
would always be the gainer by such a bargain. The dif-
ficult point does not lie in proving that, if the price of all

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

2ib

com-raodities falls, I will get more commodities for the
same money.

Economists always take the price of labour at the mo-
ment of its exchange with other commodities. But they
altogether ignore the moment at which labour accom-
plishes its own exchange with capital.

When less expense is required to set in motion the
machine which produces commodities, the things neces-
sary for the maintenance of this machine, called a work-
er, will also cost less. If all commodities are cheaper, la-
bour, which is a commodity too, will also fall in price,
and, as we shall see later, this commodity, labour, will
fall far lower in proportion than the other commodities.
If the worker still pins his faith to the arguments of the
economists, he will find that the franc has melted away
in his pocket, and that he has only five sous left.

Thereupon the economists will tell you: “Well, we
admit that competition among the workers, which will
certainly not haive diminished under free trade, will very
soon bring wages into harmony with thi low price of
commodities. But, on the other hand, the low price of
commodities will increase consumption, the larger con-
sumption will require increased production, which will
be followed by a larger demand for hand", and this
larger demand for hands will be followed by a rise in
wages.”

The whole line of argument amounts to this: Free trade
increases productive forces. If industry keeps growing,
if wealth, if the productive power, if, in a word,, produc-
tive capital increases, the demand for labour, the price
of labour, and consequently the rate of wages, rise also.

The most favourable condition for the worker is the
growth of capital. This must be admitted. If capital re-
mains stationary, industry will not merely remain sta-
tionary but will decline, and in this case* the worker will
be the first victim. He goes to the wall before the capi-
talist. And in the case where capital keeps growing, irt the
15 *

216

ON THE QUESTION OP FREE TBADE

circumstainces whidh we have said are the best for the
worker, what will be his lot? He will go to the wall just
the same. The growth o^f productive capital implies the
accumulation and the concentration of capital. The cen-
tralization of capital involves a greater division of la-
bour and a greater use of machinery. The greater division
of labour destroys the especial skill of the labourer; and
by putting in the place of this skilled work labour which
any one can perform, it increases competition among the
workers;

This competition becomes fiercer as the division of
labour enables a single worker to do the work of three.
Machinery accomplishes the same result on a much larg-
er scale. The growth of productive capital, which forces
the industrial capitalists to work with constantly in-
creasing means, ruins the small industrialists and
throws them into the proletariat. Then, the rate of inter-
est falling in proportion as capital accumulates, the
small rentiers, who can no longer live on their dividends,
are forced to go into industry and thus swell the number
of proletarians.

Finally, the more productive capital increases, the
more it is compelled to produce for a market whose re-
quirements it does not know, the more production pre-
cedes consumption, the more supply tries to force de-
mand, and consequently crises increase in frequency and
in intensity. But every crisis in turn hastens the_ central-
ization of capital and adds to the proletariat.

Thus, as productive capital grows, competition among
the workers grows in a far greater proportion. The re-
ward of labour diminishes for all, and the burden of
labour increases for somp.

In 1829, there were in Manchester 1,088 cotton spin-
ners employed in 36 factories. In 1841, there were no
more than 448, and they tended 53,353 more spindles
than the 1,088 spinners did in 1829. If manual labour
had increased in the same proportion as the produc-

ON THE QUESTION OP FREE TRADE

217

tive power, the number of spinners ought to have
reached the figure of 1,848; improved machinery had;
therefore, deprived 1,100 workers of employment.

We know beforehand the reply of the economists.
The men thus deprived of work, they say, will find
other kinds of employment. Dr. Bowring did not fail
to reproduce this argument at the Congress of
Economists, but neither did he fail to supply his own
refutation.

In 1835, Dr. Bowring made a speech in the House of
Commons upon the 50,000 hand-loom weavers of Lon-
don wfco for a very long time had been starving with-
out being able to find that new kind of employment
which the free-traders hold out to them in the distance.

We will give the most striking passages of this
speech of Dr. Bowring:®®

“This distress of the weavers... is an inevitable
condition of a species of labour easily learned — and
constantly intruded on and superseded by cheaper
means of production. A very short cessation of de-
mand, where the competition for work is so great . . .
produces a crisis. The hand-loom weavers are on the
verge of that state beyond Which human existence can
hardly be sustained, and a very trifling check hurls
them into the regions' of starvation The improve-

ments of machinery, ... by superseding manual labour
more and more, infallibly bring with them in the tran-
sition much of temporary suffering The national

good cannot be purchased but at the expense of some
individual evil. No advance was ever made in manu-
factures but at some cost to those who are in the rear;
and of all discoveries, the power-loom is that which
most directly bears on the condition of the hand-loom
weaver. He is already beaten out of the field in many
articles; he will infallibly be compelled to surrender
many more.”

Further on he says:

218

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

“I hold in my hand the correspondence which has
taken place between the Governor-General of India and
the East-India Company, on the subject of the Dacca
hand-loom weavers.... Some years ago the East-India
Company annually received of the produce of the
looms of India to the amount of from 6,000,000 to
8,000,000 of pieces of cotton goods. The demand grad-
ually fell to somewhat more than 1,000,000, and has
now nearly ceased altogether. In 1800, the United
States took from India nearly 800,000 pieces of cottons;
in 1830, not 4,000. In 1800, 1,000,000 pieces were
shipped to Portugal; in 1830, only 20,000. Terrible are the
accounts of the wretchedness of the poor Indian weav-
ers, reduced to absolute starvation. And what was the
sole cause? The presence of the cheaper English manu-
facture. . . . Numbers of them died of hunger; the re-
mainder were, for the most part, transferred to other
occupations, principally agricultural. Not to have
changed their trade was inevitable starvation. And at
this moment that Dacca district is supplied with yarn
and cotton cloth from the power-looms of England. . . .
The Dacca muslins, celebrated over the whole world
for their beauty and fineness, are also annihilated from
the same cause. And the present suffering, to numer-
ous classes in India, is scarcely to be paralleled in
the history of commerce.”

Dr. Bowring’s speech is the more remarkable because
the facts quoted by him are exact, and the phrases
with which he seeks to palliate them are wholly char-
acterized by the hypocrisy common to all free trade
sermons. He represents the workers as means of pro-
duction which must be superseded by less expensive
means of production. He pretends to see in the labour
of which he speaks a wholly exceptional kind of la-
bour, and in the machine which has crushed out the
weavers an equally exceptional machine. He forgets
that there is no kind of manual labour which may not

ON THE QUESTION OF FBEE TRADE

219

any day be subjected to the fate of the hand-loom weav-
ers.

“It is, in fact, the constant aim and tendency of
every improvement in machinery to supersede human
labour altogether, or to diminish its cost by substitut-
ing the industry of women and children for that of
men; or that of ordinary labourers for trained artisans.
In most of the water-twist, or throstle cotton-mills, the
spinning is entirely managed by females of sixteen
years and upwards. The effect of substituting the self-
acting mule for the common mule, is to discharge the
greater part of the men spinners, and to retain
adolescents and children.”®^

These words of the most enthusiastic free-trader,
Dr. Ure, serve to complement the confessions of Dr.
Bowring. Dr. Bowring speaks of certain individual
evils, and, at the same time, says that these individual
evils destroy whole classes; he speaks of the tempo-
rary sufferings during the transition period, and at the
very time of speaking of them, he does not deny that
these temporary evils have implied for the majority the
transition from life to death, and for the rest a tran;
sition from a better to a worse condition. If he asserts,
farther on, that the sufferings of these workers are
inseparable from the progress of industry, and are nec-
essary to the prosperity of the nation, he simply says
that the prosperity of the bourgeois class presupposes
as necessary the suffering of the labouring class.

All the consolation which Dr. Bowring offers the
workers who perish, and, indeed, the whole doctrine
of compensation which the free-traders propound,
amounts to this:

You thousands of workers who are perishing, do
not despair! You can die with an easy conscience. Your
class will not perish. It will always be numerous
enough for the capitalist class to decimate it without
fear of annihilating it. Besides, how could capital be

220

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

usefully applied if it did not take care always to keep
up its exploitable material, i.e., the workers, to exploit
them over and over again?

But, besides, why propound as a problem still to be
solved the question: What influence will the adoption
of free trade have upon the condition of the working
class? All the laws formulated by the political econo-
mists from Quesnay to Ricardo have been based upon
the hypothesis that the trammels which still interfere
with commercial freedom have disappeared. These
laws are confirmed in proportion as free trade is adopt-
ed. The first of these laws is that competition reduces
the price of every commodity to the minimum cost of
production. Thus the minimum of wages is the natural
price of labour. And what is the minimum of wages?
Just so much as is required for production of the articles
indispensable for the maintenance of the worker, for
putting him in a position to sustain himself, however
badly, and to propagate his race, however slightly.

But do not imagine that the worker receives only
this minimum wage, and still less that he always re-
ceives it.

No, according to this law, the working class will
sometimes be more fortunate. It will sometimes receive
something above the minimum, but this surplus will
merely make up for the deficit which it will have re-
ceived below the minimum in times of industrial stag-
nation. That is to say that, within a given time which re-
curs periodically, in the cycle which industry passes
through while undergoing the vicissitudes of prosper-
ity, overproduction, stagnation and crisis, when reck-
oning all that the working class will have had above
and below necessaries, we shall see that, in all, it
will have received neither more nor less than the min-
imum; i.e., the working class will have maintained
itself as a class after enduring any amount of misery
and misfortune, and after leaving many corpses upon

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

221

the industrial battle-field. But what of that? The class
will still exist; nay, more, it will have increased.

But this is not all. The progress of industry creates
less expensive means of subsistence. Thus spirits have
taken the place of beer, cotton that of wool and linen,
and potatoes that of bread.

Thus, as means are constantly being found for the
maintenance of labour on cheaper and more wretched
food, the minimum of wages is constantly sinking. If
these wages began by making the man work to live,
they end by making him live the life of a machine. His
existence has no other value than that of a simple pro-
ductive force, and the capitalist treats him accordingly.

This law of commodity labour, of the minimum of
wages, will be confirmed in proportion as the suppo-
sition of the economists, free trade, becomes an actual
fact. Thus, of two things one: either we must reject all
political economy based upon the assumption of free
trade, or we must admit that under this free trade the
whole severity of the economic laws will fall upon the
workers.

To sum up, what is free trade under the present con-
dition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you
have overthrown the few national barriers which still
restrict the progress of capital, you will merely have
given it complete freedom of action. So long as you
let the relation of wage labour to capital exist, it does
not matter how favourable the conditions under which
the exchange of commodities takes place, there will
always be a class which will exploit and a class which
will be exploited. It is really difficult to understand
the claim of the free-traders who imagine that the more
advantageous application of capital will abolish the
antagonism between industrial capitalists and wage
workers. On the contrary, the only result will be that
the antagonism of these two classes will stand out
still more clearly,

16—1464

ON THE QUESTION OP FREE TRADE

222

Let us assume for a moment that there are no more
Corn Laws or national or local customs duties; in fact
that all the accidental circumstances which today the
worker may take to be the cause of his miserable con-
dition have entirely vanished, and you will have re-
moved so many curtains that hide from his eyes his
true enemy.

He will see that capital become free will make him
no less a slave than capital trammelled by customs
duties.

Gentlemen! Do not allow yourselves to be deluded
by the abstract word freedom. Whose freedom?
It is not the freedom of one individual in relation
to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the
worker.

Why should you desire to go on sanctioning free
competition with this idea of freedom, when this free-
dom is only the product of a state of things based
upon free competition?

We have shown what sort of brotherhood free trade
begets between the different classes of one and the
same nation. The brotherhood which free trade would
establish between the nations of the earth would hardly
be more fraternal. To call cosmopolitan exploitation
universal brotherhood is an idea that could only be
engendered in the brain of the bourgeoisie. AH the
destructive phenomena which unlimited competition
gives rise to within one country are reproduced in
more gigantic proportions on the world market. We
need not dwell any longer upon free trade sophisms
on this subject, which are worth just as much as the
arguments of our prize-winners Messrs. Hope, Morse
and Greg.

For instance, we are told that free trade would
create an international division of labour, and thereby
give to each country the production which is most in
harmony with its natural advantages.

ON THE QUESTION OP FUEE TRADE

223

You believe perhaps, gentlemen, that the production
of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West
Indies.

Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble
herself about commerce, had planted neither sugar-
cane nor coffee trees there.

And it may be that in less than half a century you
will find there neither coffee nor sugar, for the East In-
dies, by means of cheaper production, have already
successfully combated this alleged natural destiny of
the West Indies. And the West Indies, with their
natural wealth, are already as heavy a burden for
England as the weavers of Dacca, who also were
destined from the beginning of time to weave by
hand.

One other thing must never be forgotten, namely,
that, just as everything has become a monopoly, there
are also nowadays some branches of industry which
dominate all the others, and secure to the nations
which most largely cultivate them the command of the
world market. Thus in international commerce cotton
alone has much greater commercial importance than
all the other raw materials used in the manufacture of
clothing put together. It is truly ridiculous to see the
free-traders stress the few specialities in each branch
of industry, throwing them into the balance against
the products used in everyday consumption and pro-
duced most cheaply in those countries in which manufac-
ture is most highly developed.

If the free-traders cannot understand how one na-
tion can grow rich at the expense of another, we need
not wonder, since these same gentlemen also refuse to
understand how within one country one class can en-
rich itself at the expense of another.

Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticizing free-
dom of trade we have the least intention of defending
the system of protection.

16 * '

224

ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE

One may declare oneself an enemy of the constitu-
tional regime without declaring oneself a friend of the
ancient regime.

Moreover, the protectionist system is nothing but a
means of establishing large-scale industry in any
given country, that is to say, of making it dependent
upon the world market, and from the moment that de-
pendence upon the world market is established, there
is already more or less dependence upon free trade.
Besides this, the protective system helps to develop
free competition within a country. Hence we see that
in countries where the bourgeoisie is beginning to
make itself felt as a class, in Germany for example, it
makes great efforts to obtain protective duties. They
serve the bourgeoisie as weapons against feudalism
and absolute government, as a means for the concen-
tration of its own powers and for the realization of free
trade within the same country.

But, in general, the protective system of our day is
conservative, while the free trade system is destruc-
tive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the an-
tagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the
extreme point. In a word, the free trade system has-
tens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary
sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free
trade.

EDITORIAL NOTES

^ Engels refers to K. Marx’s Letter to J. B. Schweitzer of

January 24, 1865. See present edition, pp. 194-202. p. 7

2 See present edition pp. 68-75 p. 9

^ Accountant of a government chief revenue office. A fancy
title used by Engels in a satirical sense. p. 18

^ An economist pursuing a definite tendency. p. 23

® See present edition, p 68. p. 25

6 THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY. Answer to the ''Phi-
losophy of Poverty’' by M. Proudhon, is one of the most im-
portant productions of Marxism, Karl Marx’s principal work di-
rected against P. J. Proudhon, an ideologist of the petty bour-
geoisie, The intention of criticizing Proudhon’s views, which se-
riously impeded the dissemination of scientific commiunism among
the workers, and at the same time shed light, from the scientific-
materialist position, on a number of questions of theory and
tactics of the revolutionary proletarian movement, crystallized
in Marx’s mind in December 1-846 .as a result of his reading,
a short time before, Proudhon’s Systeme des Contradictions
economiques ou Philosophie de la Misere. In his letter to the
Russian 1 iterator P. V. Annenkov dated December 28, 1847, Marx
gave utterance to a number of deep ideas, wihich he subsequently
made the basis of his book against Proudhon. In January 1847,
as appears from Engels’s letter to Marx bearing date January
15, 184^7, Marx was already at work on his reply to Proudhon.
By the beginning of April it had been completed in the main
and was in the printshop. On June 15, Marx wrote a short fore-
word.

The book appeared in Brussels and Paris early in July 1847
and was not republished in Marx’s lifetime. The year 1885 wit-
nessed the first German edition. Engels edited the translation,
contrdibuting a special preface and a number of notes to it. When
editing the book Engels made use of the corrections in the copy
of the Frendh 1847 edition given by Marx as a gift on January

226

EDITORIAL NOTES

1, 1876, to Natalia Utina, wife of N. I. Utin, a member of the
Russian Section of the First International In 1886, the Russian
Marxist Emancipation of Labour group published the first Rus-
sian edition of The Poverty of Philosophy in a translation made
by Vera Zasulich. In 1892, a second German edition appeared.
This too was prefaced by Engels, who here briefly corrected some
textual inaccuracies. In 1896, after Engels’s death, a second
French edition of the book came out. It had been prepared by
Laura Lafargue, Marx’s second daughter, and also contained
the marginal corrections in the Utina copy. p, 27

References to quotations from works by English authors are
to the edition which ‘Marx himself used. p. 36

® The full reference is: David Ricardo, Des principes de Te-
conomie politique et de Timpot. Traduit de Tanglais par F.-S
Constancio, avec des notes expHcatives et critiques par J.-B. Say.
T. II, Paris, 1835, p. 65. p. 36

® The full reference is: A. Anderson, An Historical and Chron-
ological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce from the Earl-
iest Accounts to the Present Time. First edition appeared in
London in 1764. p. 38

The full reference is: H. Storch, Cours d’economie poliit-
que, ou Exposition des principes qui determinent la prosperite
des nations. T. I-IV, Paris, 18,23. Marx quotes from volume I.

p. 40

The period in question begins after the termination of the
Napoleonic wars and the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in
France in 1815. p. 45

The full reference is: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. First edition ap-
peared in London in 1776. p. 46

In the copy Marx presented to N. Utina in 1876, after the
word “labour” is added “labour power.” This addition is found
in the French edition of 1896. p. 58

luvenalis Satirae. p. 59

15 Boisguillebert’s work is quoted from the symposium Eco-
nomistes-financiers dti XVIII siecle. Prefaced by an historical
sketch on each author and accompanied by commentaries and
explanatory notes by Eugene Daire; Paris, 1843. p. 67

EDITORIAL NOTES

227

Troy is no more. p. 68

The full reference is: Th. Hodgskin, Popular Political Econ-^
omy, London, 1827.

The original mistakenly has here the name of Hopkins. In
1892, in the second German edition of The Poverty of Philosophy,
Engels corrected this inaccuracy, which had been made use of
by the Austrian bourgeois jurist Menger to make unwarranted
assumptions about this reference by Marx. p. 69

The books by Thompson and Edmonds were published in

London. P- 69

His initials are “J. F.” p. 69

20 The Ten Hours’ Bill, which applied only to women and
children, was passed by the British Parliament on June 8, 1847.
Many manufacturers, however, ignored the law in practice, p. 77

21 Marx quotes a chapter from Voltaire’s Histoire du parte-

merit. It is entitled “France in the Period of the Regency and
Law’s System.” P- 64

22 The reference is to Say’s note on the French edition of

Ricardo’s book, Vol. 11, pp. 206-207. p. 88

22 Senior’s initials are “N. W.” P- 99

2*1 The latter reference in full is: Th. Tooke, A History of

Prices, and of the State of the Circulation, from 1793 to 1837.
Vols. MI, London, 1838. p. 90

22 The first edition of the book was published in Colombia in

1826. A second, enlarged edition appeared in London in ISSI.

I p. 91

26 The full reference is: M. Th. Sadler, The Law of Popula-
tion, Vol. I, London, 1830, pp. 83 and 84. p. 92

27 The reference is to Quesnay’s two principal economic

works: Tableau economiyue (175i8) and Analyse du Tableau eco~
nomique (1766). P*

28 Marx hints at the work of Quesnay’s contemporary N. Bau-
deau, Explication du Tableau economique, published in 1770.

, p. 104

228

EDITORIAL NOTES

29 G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Bd. Ill; Werke,
2-te Aufi., Bd. V, Berlin, 1841, -S. 320 p. 107

Marx quotes these words from the following passage of
Lucretius’s poem On the Nature of Things (Book III, line 869):
"'mortalem vitam mors immortalis ademif' (“immortal death
hath taken away mortal life”). p. 110

21 A. de Villeneuve-B'argemont, Histoire de VBconomie poli-
tique, the first edition o-f which appeared in Brussels in 1839.

: ; p. 120

22 In the copy Marx presented to N. Utina the words “work-
ing class” are written. p. 122

22 Marx quotes Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations from the French edition:
Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des na-
tions, T. I, Paris, 1802, pp. 33-34. p. 129

2^ To each one his own. p. 129

22 Lemontey alludes to his book: Raison, folk, chacun son

mot; petit cours de morale mis d la portee des vieux enfants
(Reason^ Folly, to Each His Own Word; a Short Course in
Morality Within the Mental Reach of Old Children, Paris, 1801).

Marx quotes Lemontey’s work Influence morale de la divi-
sion du travail. In which Lemontey refers to the above book.

p. 129

22 Which was the thing to be proved. p. 131

27 The full reference is: Gh. Babbage, Traite stir r economic
des machines et des manufactures, Paris, 1833, p. 230. p. 138

22 Literally, in the territories of the infidels. Here the phrase
means: beyond the realm of reality. In partibus infidelium was
an addition to the title of Catholic bishops appointed to purely
nominal office in pagan countries. p. 148

29 P. Rossi, Cours d'economie politique, T. I-II, Paris, 1840-
41. p. 151

^9 James Steuart, Recherches des principes de Feconomie po-
litique. T. II, Paris, 1789, pp. 190-91. This first English edition of
the book appeared in London in 1767. p. 153

EDITORIAL NOTES

229

The Man ol Forty Ecus— the hero of Voltaire’s story of the
same name, a modest, liard-worikinig peasant with an annual in-
come of 40 ecus. The following passage is quoted from the
story. p. 156

Literally, a goid from a machine. In the theatre of antiqui-
ty actors representing gods appeared upon the scene hy stage
machinery to overcome a superhuman difficulty. Figuratively, a
person who appears unexpectedly to save a situation. p. 156

Propriete [property] is explained by the intervention of the
proprietaire (landowner); rente (rent), by the intervention of
the rentier (rent receiver). Juxtaposition of rente and rentier.

p- 156

In the copy Marx presented to N. Utina, the beginning of
this sentence was altered as follows: “For the Ricardian doc-
trine, once the premises granted, to be generally true, it is more-
over essential that. . .” p. 158

In the copy presented to N. Utina, the words “on inferior
land” were altered to “on the land.” p, 158

'In the German edition of 1885 the last two sentences are
omitted, and after “industrial capitalist” is added: “who exploits
the soil by means of his wage workers, and who pays to the
landowner as rent only the surplus over the production costs,
including profit on capital.” p. 159

W. Petty, Political Arithmetick, in the book W. Petty, Se-
veral Essays in Political Arithmetick, London, 1699. p. 166

The laws in operation at that time in France — the so-
called Le Chapelier law adopted in 1791 during the bourgeois rev-
olution by the Constituent Assembly and the criminal code elab-
orated under the Napoleonic Empire— forbade the workers to
form labour unions or to go on strike on pain of severe punish-
ment. The prohibition of trade unions was abolished in France
as late as 1884. P* 170

National Association of United Trades: A trade-union organ-
ization established in England in 1845. Its activity did not ex-
tend beyond the scope of economic struggle for better condi-
tions of sale of labour power, for better labour laws. The Asso-
ciation existed until tihe early sixties, but after 1851 it did not
play an important part in the trade-union movement. p. 172

230

EDITORIAL. NOTES

“Comibat or death: bloody struggle or extinction It is thus
that the question is inexorably put.” George Sand, Jean Ziska.
A historical novel. Introduction. p. 175

Published in the Sozialdemokrat of February 1, 3 and 5,
1865. “We considered it best to give the article unaltered/' stat-
ed an editorial note. See present edition, p. 7. p. 194

^\siTX, The Poverty of Philosophy, Chap. II. See present
edition, p. 127. p. 199

Marx’s speech On the Question of Free Trade, which ap-
peared in French at Brussels early in February 1848, was trans-
lated into German the same year and published in Germany by
Joseph Weydemeyer, a friend and pupil of Marx and Engels.
In compliance with a wish Engels had expressed this work was
printed in 1685 as an appendix to the first German edition of
The Poverty of Philosophy and has since been reprinted repeat-
edly as part of that book. p. 207

54 See note 8, /. c,, T I. pp. 178-179 p. 213

55 Marx alludes to the Congress of Economists which was

held in Brussels on September 16-18, 1848. The following, among
others, were present from England: Dr. Bowring, M.P., Col.
Thompson, Mr. Ewart, Mr. Brown, and James Wilson, editor of
the Economist. p. 214

55 Speech in the House of Commons, July 28, 1835. (Han-
sard, Vol. XXIX, London 1835, pp. 1168-1170.) p. 217

57 Dr. Andrew Ure: The Philosophy of Manufactures, London
1835, Book I, Chap. I, p. 23. p. 219

NAME INDEX

A

Anderson^ Adam ( 1692- 1765) --
38. ' 1

Annenkov, Pavel Vasilyevich
(1812-1887)— 179.

Arkwright, Richard (1732-1792) —
140, 141.

.Atkinson, William — 68.

B

Babbage, Charles (1792-1871) —
138.

Bastiat, Frederic (1801-1850) —

201 .

Bandeau, Nicolas (1730-1792) —
104.

Blanqui, Jerome- Adolphe (1798-
1854)— 51.

Boisguillebert, Pierre (1646-
1714)— 67, 89.

Bonaparte, Louis — See Napo-
leon III.

Bowring, John (1792-1872) —
207, 211, 214, 218, 219.

Bray, John Francis (1809-1895)
—9, 16, 69-74, 76, 78, 79.

Bright, John (1811-1889)— 207.

Brissot, Jean-Pierre (1754-1793)
— 196.

C

Cabet, Etienne ( 1 788- 1 856) —200*

Charles the Great (742-814)— 84.

Charles I! (1630-1685)— 166.

Cherbuliez, Antoine Elisee (1797-
1869) — 161.

ColberR Jean-Baptlste (1619-
1683)— 84, 148.

Consiancio F. S. (1777-1843) —

36 , 45 .

Cooper, Thomas (1759-1840) —

91 .

< D

Daire^ Louis-Frangois-Eugene
(1798-1847)— 67, 89.

Droz, Frangois-Xavier-J oseph
(1773-1851)— 51.

Dunoyer, Charles (1786-1862) —
61, 200.

E

Edmonds, Thomas Rowe (1803-
1889)— 9, 69,

Eisenbart, Johann (1661-1727) —
20.

Engels, Frederick (1820-1895) —
7, 20, 24, 25, 47, 52, 79, 112,
145, 170, 174.

F

Faucher^ Leon (1803-1854)— 168.

Ferguson, Adam (1723-1816) —
129 130

Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804-1872)
—194.

Fourier, Charles (1772-1837) —
145, 170, 192, 194.

232

NAME INDEX

G

Gray John (1799-1850) — 14, 16,
21, 24, 203-206.

Greg^ William (1809-1881) —

209-211.

Grun, Karl (1817-1887)— 196,

H

Harvey^ William (1578-1657) —
150.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
(1770-1831)— 103-105, 107, 108,
111, 112, 114, 180, 182, 194,
196, 197.

Helvetius, Claude Adrien (1715-
1771)— 200,

Hilditch, Richard — 161.

Hodgskin, Thomas (1787-1859)
g 25 69.

Hope, George (1811-1 876) —209,

222 ,

Huskisson, William (1770-1830)
— 170,

K

Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804) —
132, 195, 197.

L

Lassalle, Ferdinand (1825-1864)
—51.

Lauderdale, James (1759-1839)
—35, 36, 48, 96. I

Law, John (1671-1729)— 84.

Lemontey, Pierre- Edouard (1762-
1826)— 129, 144.

Linguet, Simon-Nicolas-Henri
(1736-1794)— 202.

Louis XIV (1638-1715)— 89.

Louis XV (1710-1774)— 103.

M

Mialthus, Thomas Robert (1766-

1834) — 195.

Marx, Karl (1818-1883)— 7-11,
13, 14, 24, 29, 51, 79, 179,
194, 198, 202, 203, 207.
Menger, Anton (1841-1906) — 25'.
Mill, James (1773-1836)— 161.
Mill, John-Stuart (1806-1873) —
90.

N

Napoleon I, Bonaparte (1769-
1821)— 111.

Napoleon III (Louis Bonaparte)
(1808-1873)— 202.

O

Owen, Robert (1771-1858) — 170.

P

Peter the Great (1672-1725) —
201 ,

Petty, (1623-1687)— 166

Philip I (1052-1108)— 84-86.

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1809-
1865)— 7-9, 14, 16, 21, 29-44,
49, 50, 52-61, 63-67, 69, 76
79-96, 98, 101-105, 108-120,
126-135, 137-140, 144-156,

159-170, 179-202, 206.

Q

Quesnay^ Frangois (1694-1774)
— 103,'220.

' 1 R

Raumer, Frederick-Ludwig- Georg
(1781-1873)— 202.

Ricardo, David (1772-1823) —
8-13, 23, 33, 36, 44-51, 54, 64,
65, 87-89, 96, 103, 123, 124,
155-160, 198, 213, 220.

NAME INDEX

233

Rodbertus, Johann Karl (1805-
1875)— 7-11, 14-17, 19-23.
Rossi, Pellegrino Luigi (1787-
1848)— 51, 151.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-
1778)— 202.

S

Sadler^ Michael Thomas (1780-
1835)— 91, 92.

Saini-Simon, ClaudC'Henri

(1760-1825)— 194.

Sand, George (1804-1876)— 175.

Say, Jean-Baptiste (1767-1832)
—36, 44, 56, 57, 88, 129.

Schweitzer, Jean-Baptiste (1833-
1875)— 194-202.

Senior, Nassau William (1790-
1864)— 90.

Sismondi, J ean-Chmles-Leonard
(1773-1842)— 35, 36, 66, 68,
130.

Smith, Adam (1723-1790)— 32,
43, 44, 46, 56, 82, 123, 124,
128, 129, 138, 141, 142, 153.

Steuart, James (1712-1780) —
153.

Storch, Heinrich Friedrich (1766-
1835)— 40.

T

Thiers^ Louis-Adolphe (1797-
1877)— 200.

Thompson, William (1785-1833)
—9, 25, 69, 206.

Tooke^ Thomas (1774-1858) —
90.

U

Ure, Andrew (1778-1857) — 140,
141, 143, 219.

V

Villeneuve-Bargemont, Jean-Paul
Alban (1784- 1850) -120.
Voltaire, Frangois-Marie (1694-
1778)— 84, 201, 202.

W

Wagner, Adolf (1835-1917)— 15.
Weitling, Wilhelm (1808-1871)
— 8 .

William of Orange (1650-1702)
—153.

Wyatt, John (1700-1766)— 140.

TO THE READER

The Foreign Languages Publishing
House would be glad to have your opinion
of the translation and the design of this
book.

Please send them to 21, Zubovsky
Boulevard^ Moscow, U.S.S,R.